Antony and the Johnsons: that elemental voice earns rapt devotion

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 03/11/2008
Bernadette McNulty reviews Antony and the Johnsons at the Barbican

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/11/03/bmantony103.xml

Amid the heated tumult of boom and bust, insult and recrimination, credit crunches and witch hunts, it is a relief to welcome back the sparse, still music of Antony and the Johnsons. After winning the Mercury prize in 2005, singer Antony Hegarty seemed to withdraw to his underground New York art lair, popping up as a phantom collaborator on projects with filmmakers and fashion designers, and making records with kindred souls in a smorgasbord of styles: torch ballads with Marc Almond, disco anthems with Hercules and Love Affair, electro elegies with Björk. In each case, with just one song, he would transform the whole album.

With the 37-year-old Hegarty, less is clearly more, and while working on his own follow-up album, he has described the last three years as a process of "whittling away". So it was a bit of a surprise that he and his backing band the Johnsons should hook up with the London Symphony Orchestra for two performances.