ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS – QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON, 16TH APRIL 2005
April 21st, 2005 by rui
ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS – QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON, 16TH APRIL 2005
It was clear there was something remarkable happening as soon as you stepped into the lobby of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The glamorous, the gauche, the aspirational and the merely curious were gathering for a rare UK visit by Antony and the Johnsons. The A-list status of the audience was confirmed when your humble (and distinctly under-dressed) correspondent had to sidestep Liz Fraser in the bar, only to shoulder-charge a certain Bernard Butler.
A few months ago the English-born, California-raised singer Antony (no surname) was languishing in the self-indulgent decadence of the New York performance art scene. The patronage of Lou Reed first exposed him to wider audiences, but it was only when his second album surfaced this year that the world began to take notice of perhaps the most singularly gifted and groundbreaking vocalist to emerge this century. That album, ‘I Am A Bird Now’, an emotional cascade of twisted torch songs and cabaret nightmares, is without question the most strikingly original and emotionally demanding album heard this year.
When he takes the stage, Antony offers a unlikely personage. His music tells tales of identity dysfunction and a tortured sexuality, his voice carries such great frailty, and his lyrics such insecurity that you really do not expect a lumbering giant in an Emo Phillips wig and what looks like Gerard Depardieu’s cast-off Armani suit to take the stage – or more accurately borrow one tiny corner of the stage. For such a flamboyant performer, Antony is incongruously shy. It takes almost 45 minutes before he looks up from his grand piano and peers out from under his fringe to offer a diffident ‘thank you’ to the assembled worshippers.
Not that he needs to say much. His songs, played here with a wonderfully demure five-piece band, convey more truth, more emotion, more raw spiritual depth than any pre-prepared, half-sincere banter. Critics, in their rush to categorize the uncategorizable, have compared Antony to many of the great soul, jazz and pop singers of our time or any other. Most commonly (and understandably) they have named Nina Simone, whose anguished, androgynous, impassioned delivery is indentifiable, but this – like other comparisons – does Antony an injustice.It’s not that he’s a better singer. It’s simply that he’s a very different creature to any which precede him.
Tonight, as on record, Antony conveys an emotionality that is genuinely unprecedented. As he pores over tracks from his new album, plus highlights of his debut (notably a tearful rendition of ‘Cripple and the Starfish’) he drags his audience onto the rocks of despair like a mythological siren, only to then offer spiritual salvation through those joyous, intricate melodies.
The emotional maelstrom of the gig reached its eye when Antony finally spoke to us. It was to welcome a special guest, a childhood idol whom seven months ago we feared would never tread a stage again: Marc Almond. As the two tortured souls pushed themselves through a wraught rendition of ‘River of Sorrow’, tears were visible on the cheeks of both. They weren’t the only ones.
Enchanted Gordon
