59. I Am a Bird Now

59. I Am a Bird Now, Antony and the Johnsons (Secretly Canadian, 2005)

Antony Hegarty, an England-born, longtime US resident, toiled for years in the experimental theatres and cabarets of New York City before an arts grant in ’96 enabled him to record professionally with other musicians.  Hegarty named his nascent group after late transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, and constructed a sparse, piano-based sound featuring his theatrical, almost operatic singing voice.  Their increasingly frequent late-Nineties live gigs got the attention of experimental artist-musician David Tibet, who had worked with Psychic TV and Nurse With Wound while leading his own group, Current 93, and operating the small UK label Durtro.  Tibet offered Hegarty an album release, resulting in an eponymous ’98 LP.  Hegarty’s talent arrived fully formed on Antony and the Johnsons, no surprise after eight years of live performance.  A relatively straightforward set of piano ballads whose lyrics address difficult topics from romantic catharsis to psychosexuality, it is good in its own right but the least compelling of his three studio albums to date.  It would be seven years before his next album; the group’s only new releases until then were the ’00 three-song Durtro EP I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy, two-thirds of which consisted of covers, and two minor split releases with Tibet’s Current 93 (half of a live EP and one studio outtake on a 7”).  While Hegarty lacked in prolificacy, his connections in the NYC art world secured him numerous collaborations and film appearances; most notably, he sang lead vocals for two songs on Lou Reed’s ’04 live LP Animal Serenade. These guest spots were no preparation for the creative leap of his next studio album.

I Am a Bird Now is a stark, soulful set of songs addressing gender identity, dysphoria, and psychic ascension from traditional concepts of sexual classification.  Twenty musicians and vocalists are credited, almost twice as on his debut LP, and only drummer Todd Cohen is retained.  The accompaniment includes strings and horns, used judiciously with minimal arrangements reminiscent of a chamber ensemble.  While Hegarty’s voice is the focal point, several other singers appear; Lou Reed contributes a spoken introduction to Fistful of Love, Devendra Banhart sings a brief aria on Spiralling, and Rufus Wainwright sings an entire song, the excellent What Can I Do?  The finest guest vocal comes when Hegarty duets with Boy George on the emotional You Are My Sister; the performance illustrates the power of George’s voice, a reminder that his Aughts activity transcended his tabloid-level mayhem.  “Hope there’s someone who’ll take care of me/When I die, when I go,” Hegarty sings on the opening cut, presaging the ruminations on death and transition he would examine closely on his next album, The Crying Light (’09; see #93); death is a theme on Bird as well, though here it is often followed by a second birth—that of the soul and sexual spirit. This is most pronounced in For Today I Am a Boy and, in the triumphant album closer, Bird Gehrl: “I’m gonna be born/Into, soon, the sky/’Cause I’m a bird girl/And the bird girls go to heaven/I’m a bird girl/And the bird girls can fly.”  Hegarty’s compositions on I Am a Bird Now speak to the ecstatic truths of individual identity, with a command seen in few other singers of the time.  His creative growth in the seven years since his first album represents one of the most startling progressions in Aughts pop music.  Bird controversially won the UK Mercury Prize (not for subject matter, but for disputes over Hegarty's residency; the prize is intended for British recordings), and remains NOYOUCMON’s pick for best album of 2005.

Highlights: Bird Gerhl, Fistful of Love, You Are My Sister, Hope There’s Someone

Sublime bit: One comes along about every three minutes on this album, but the sheer emotion of his vocal on Bird Gehrl encapsulates them all.

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93. The Crying Light

93. The Crying Light, Antony and the Johnsons (Secretly Canadian, 2009)

After fifteen years of singing and conceptual performance in the NYC art scene, Antony Hegarty found success with his second studio album, ’05’s I Am a Bird Now.  Controversial winner of the Mercury Prize—an award for UK-only artists, and the England-born Hegarty had lived in the U.S. since age ten—Bird is a nakedly emotional examination of gender identity draped in Hegarty’s ethereal yet muscular croon.  In the years after Bird, Hegarty filled many guest slots, most notably working with Lou Reed as well as serving as vocalist for Andrew Butler’s electro-dance project Hercules and Love Affair on their eponymous ’08 LP.  Hegarty’s personal recording pace is slow at best, however, and when the hotly anticipated The Crying Light arrived it was only his third album in eleven years.

The four-track EP Another World preceded The Crying Light by three months, its title track appearing on both; the two records’ aesthetic presentation echo that of I Am a Bird Now, cloaked in wordless sleeves with stark, monochrome photographs capturing real-life examples of gender fluidity.  While Bird's explorations of sexual identity were housed in a photograph of Warhol transvestite associate Candy Darling, The Crying Light and its related EP show male Japanese conceptual dancer Kazuo Ohno.  Ohno pioneered a highly conceptual style of dance termed butoh, embracing controversial sexual themes as early as the 1950s, its performers often in drag.  Ohno performed into his nineties; confined to a wheelchair and 102 years old at the release of The Crying Light, his work’s trajectory echoes the themes of Hegarty’s LP: nature, the soul, aging, and transmutation. While Bird examined people’s relations to themselves, Light finds its subjects relating not just to the world around them but also to eternity.

Another World’s narrator, readying for death—or perhaps just some type of metamorphosis—says goodbye to temporality.  “I need another world/This one’s nearly gone,” sings Hegarty, suggesting it may not be him that is dying; he lists a dozen things he’ll miss, including sea, snow, bees, and things that grow, before concluding “I’m gonna miss the wind/Been kissing me so long.”  This evocative, romantic hymn is the album’s centerpiece.  The Crying Light’s music is even more delicate than the piano balladry and dark, restrained pop of I Am a Bird Now.  Guitar and bass do figure in the Johnsons’ roster here, but several songs find the group and pianist Hegarty accompanied by a chamber orchestra and the arrangements are beautifully austere.  The record’s feng shui is impeccable; there are 27 musicians credited, yet the album’s sound is never cluttered or overwhelmed by activity.  One Dove, for example, features a variety of percussive crackles, a horn section, and a recorder embellishment, but the song still feels clean and spacious.  Kiss My Name is the album’s mid-tempo pop showpiece, its elegant melodies propelled by a twirling string arpeggio and gentle flutes.  In its sparkling, poppiest moments and soberest ruminations alike, The Crying Light is among the Aughts’ most lovely, gripping sets of songs, and with I Am a Bird Now it forms one of the decade’s most stunning pairs of albums.

Highlights: Kiss My Name, Epilepsy Is Dancing, Aeon, Another World

Sublime bit: Hegarty’s urgent, impassioned repetitions of “That man I love so much” in the closing verses of Aeon, a love song to Father Time.

Read the NOYOUCMON mission statement here.