| Despite the anybody-can-do-it nature of rock ’n’ roll, it has a need for great voices. They come from unexpected places and, almost always, emerge to communicate a message that has yet to be heard or needs restating for a fresh group of listeners. A soulful voice can still be a surprise, especially coming from a singularly named white man in his 30s, dressed in androgynous drag.
I Am A Bird Now, Antony & The Johnsons’ second CD, is the first remarkable album of 2005. Listeners may be reminded of when they first heard Jeff Buckley or the Cocteau Twins. For Antony, the discovery of his own voice occurred while already onstage.
"When I was 18, I was putting on these crazy midnight musicals with all my friends in Santa Cruz," he recalls, while on the road from Vermont to Montreal. "For a laugh, at the end I would get up and sing a song. Once, I started crying and I was like 'what's going on?' That was the first time I realized that it could be something I could pursue. I feel I studied singing just by listening to my favourite singers and passing through their bodies of work. I really loved Otis Redding and, when I was a kid, I was really influenced by Marc Almond. Jimmy Scott, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone – all the great black American singers. I love Elizabeth Fraser. I think I get voice lessons all the time when I listen to them and their records."
Defying the custom of expending a lifetime's experience and mining every notable influence on your debut, Antony waited for his second album to call on his heroes Boy George and Lou Reed as well as Rufus Wainwright and Devendra Banhart. (Antony had been asked by Reed to sing "Perfect Day" on 2003's The Raven.) Despite a core of musicians he returns to, Antony also sees the Johnsons as a band in theory, and open to such adaptations.
"It's sort of shape-shifting. It goes through different combinations, depending on the project. I feel that everyone I work with is in the Johnsons."
Further credit is due for sequencing the four guest appearances in a row in the middle of I Am A Bird Now. It reveals a confidence in the material, both with and without outside contributions. His duet with Boy George, "You Are My Sister," features George as few might imagine him, raw and heartfelt. Antony recalls the impact Boy George had on him.
"You used to search for a sign in the sky or a trail of breadcrumbs to find your people – if you weren't finding them at home. It was his first record, Kissing To Be Clever, and I was 11 years old. His picture on the cover – he's not even wearing hardly any makeup, maybe a tiny bit of eyeliner. You can see his little pimples and he looks so beautiful. He looks like a really beautiful girl and his singing is so soulful. Feminine is how I would characterize it, (but) it's not like I was thinking about it in those terms. Kids don't know why they love this thing or that, they just grab on for dear life."
Reed came to Antony later, via Almond, whose "L'Esqualita" provided the title for "Fistful of Love," Antony's collaboration with Reed. With a slow build and a mournful horn section, the song most resembles a classic soul arrangement.
"I first found out about Lou Reed through my big teenage hero, Marc Almond, the singer from Soft Cell and Marc & the Mambas. A lot of Marc's work in that period was the prototype for what I would start to explore in my own stuff. On the first Marc & the Mambas record, there's a cover of "Caroline Says" and, though it was one of my favourite songs on that record, I didn't even know who Lou Reed was. But the poem of the song sunk in really deep and I realize now how much I drew from all that imagery.
"I became aware of Lou Reed's recordings when I was 14 or 15. I got Rock & Roll Animal and the classic Lou solo stuff. I ended up really getting into his catalogue when I started working with him." Reed reportedly broke into tears after hearing Antony and Boy George together at Joe's Pub in New York City, painting a new picture of the prickly Velvet Underground founder. Antony sees it as consistent with the artist he knows.
"Lou is a man of passion. He's always been that and he wears his heart on his sleeve in his work in a very hardcore way. I'd say that all this is just an extension of that, really."
I am a Bird Now progresses from the bare and plaintive nature of "Hope There's Someone" through to "Man is the Baby" (genders, ages and species jumble and merge throughout) being answered by the duets and resolved by the close. It seems inevitable that the album would reach to a listener eager to define their own identity, just as Boy George did for Antony, who described George as the first reflection of himself he saw in the world. Antony greets the prospect with self-deprecation.
"Maybe. I hope not, poor thing," he says, laughing heartily. "George was 19 and so beautiful when that was happening. God forbid, poor kid." |
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