Antony makes sadness sublime
By Jim Sullivan / Review
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/general/view/2009_02_23_Antony_makes_sadness_sublime/srvc=home&position=recent (http://news.bostonherald.com/entertainment/music/general/view/2009_02_23_Antony_makes_sadness_sublime/srvc=home&position=recent)
"I need another place, will there be peace?" sang Antony Hegarty from the darkened stage at Berklee Performance Center. "I need another world, this one's nearly gone." The voice is stately, somber and sad,arriving as if from the grave, but somehow hopeful.
Exquisite melancholy is territory Hegarty, the singer-pianist of Antony and the Johnsons, knows well. His high voice flutters and floats, gliding up and over the string section. His songs reach emotional extremes uncommon in pop music. He writes as the transgendered person he is: a boy who yearns for the day he becomes a beautiful girl.
And, given the chance, he'll let out his comic side. At Sunday's sold-out show, he hit a high mark with "Crazy In Love," acknowledged the applause and then said, "You can't top perfection, but you can sidle up to it." Then, he led the audience in repeating the line, twice, urging it to use a "fake English accent, like I do."
There are few artists who can do a deftly with their craft of arty-music what Antony does. Beautifu;, even the very edgy and downright disgusting aspects somehow transcend their normal boundaries and become with his voice and the music something almost sublime.
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