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The universal acclaim heaped upon 2005’s Mercury-winning ‘I Am a Bird Now’ must’ve presented Antony Hegarty with a tricky dilemma. With a genuinely unique voice capable of injecting a thick fug of melancholy into any environment, too dramatic a departure from the breakthrough’s smoky torch songs would’ve risked alienating the newfound audience that had catapulted the New York-based but UK-born singer and his band from their obscure origins. More of the same, and that otherworldly vibrato could’ve so easily been downgraded from a startlingly original asset into a predictable, even annoying mannerism, an ever-present vocal tic to roll out whenever inspiration’s run dry.
After a similarly sombre follow-up (2008’s ‘The Crying Light’), ‘Swanlights’ locates an exit from a potential stylistic dead end by introducing a fresh element to Hegarty’s songwriting: hope. Not that there’s an ounce of a party banger to any of these eleven tracks – a Antony and The Johnsons album remains a guarantee of plentiful references to death, haunting and the more unsettling phenomena of nature. But there’s a newfound lightness of touch, even optimism to the likes of opener ‘Everything Is New’, a hypnotic mantra that builds into a rapturous finale full of wide-eyed wonder, bright like a first ray of sunshine bursting through a mass of storm clouds. Coupled with the haunting ‘The Great White Ocean’, a breathtakingly tender, guitar and violin-led ode to family ties that, instead of mourning the loss of life, celebrates what might be possible in the afterlife in a few sparse, startlingly clear verses that read like an ancient folk ballad, the first 10 minutes of ‘Swanlights’ rank as some of the most powerful music yet heard in 2010.
The upbeat ‘I’m In Love’ and ‘Thank You For Your Love’ provide the real departures, showing that Hegarty can do happy just as well as he can convey the deepest of blues. As potent as the latter’s candlelit soul and subtle horn punches, with Hegarty squeezing miles of meaning from the endlessly repeated title is, ‘Swanlights’ truly stuns when The Johnsons turn on the spookiness. The restless drone of the title track, bubbling uneasily like lava haunted by ghosts, the stately ‘The Spirit Was Gone’ and the hallucinatory visions of the Nico Muhly-assisted ‘Salt Silver Oxygen’ all impress by unveiling a dark, brooding sound that’s simultaneously comfortingly familiar and excitingly new.
With only the restrained Bjork-duet ‘Fletta’ disappointing slightly, ‘Swanlights’ proves Hegarty’s far from a one-trick pony.
