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Swanlights, the fourth full-length by Antony and the Johnsons, reveals that 2009's The Crying Light was a stepping stone that furthered his sophistication as a songwriter, arranger, and singer.
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Swanlights succeeds exactly where you might not expect it to: Hegarty sounds content, revitalised. This is a record that revels in a sense of joy.
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With his fourth album Swanlights, Antony Hegarty has created his most arresting set of songs to date.
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On Swanlights, Hegarty's fourth album under the Antony and the Johnsons moniker, the darkness lifts, and the singer sounds almost buoyant.
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Oct 27, 2010Swanlights is less straightforward than his other records and more operatic. It's still astonishingly beautiful.
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Oct 27, 2010The styles that parade their way onto Swanlights would probably be the most noticeably diverse change from what happened on previous albums.
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Familiar themes still surface, with the natural world continuing to loom large in Antony's conscience, but much of Swanlights is ambiguous and less easy to decipher.
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It's a difficult accomplishment, encompassing pop and the avant-garde while also featuring a particularly striking element (in this case, Hegarty's voice); all three are well-represented here.
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A remarkable work overall, Swanlights proves-yet again--that this odd duck has always known true beauty.
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Dec 23, 2010He captures the otherworldly more often than not. Occasionally, though, the songs overreach or miss some central point.
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MojoDeath, love, the ghosts they leave behind: these are grand themes, and Hegarty channels their spirit with magical grace. [Nov. 2010, p. 100]
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Hegarty's fourth album strictly follows the template laid down by his previous records: fragile, sombre and wistful, always dominated by that extraordinary tremulous voice, seemingly forever on the brink of bursting into tears.
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A record of beauty and balance, Swanlights cements Hegarty as the transgender: artsy and challenging enough for the Guardian chin-strokers, but with enough hushed melodic wallop to seduce all-comers.
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Swanlights is curiously one-note, occasionally self-indulgent and fails to leave a strong impression. Or perhaps Hegarty's simply raised the bar impossibly high for himself.
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Swanlights might be Antony's richest album yet, with musical and thematic charms that take their time to take their hold.
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On Swanlights, Antony takes a cue from Hamlet: the purpose of art is to hold a mirror up to nature.
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Dec 21, 2010Swanlights may not be the best of his works, but it is a welcome excursion along the path of his career.
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Q MagazineHe'll always be too mannered for mainstream acceptance, but there's unarguable brilliance here. [Nov 2010, p.105]
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The challenge for Antony Hegarty is just how best to use that quivering, purring, sobbing, ecstatic, altogether original voice.
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Swanlights reveals a portrait of the artist looking upward and onward beyond anguish.
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From yellowed headlines, nature-magazine clippings, marker scribblings, torn paper, even Kurt Cobain's visage, Antony extracts a poignancy that beautifully matches his music.
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Even when Swanlights doesn't always take corporeal form-that looseness also means several of its melodies simply fade into the shadows-Antony's voice remains a spectral wonder.
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The fourth Antony and the Johnsons album is more diverse and positive than 2008's The Crying Light, with familiar concerns of death and alienation broadening into family, human bonds, and the joys of love.
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The WireDec 22, 2010Fans are unlikely to be disappointed, but if you're expecting a new direction, look somewhere else. [Nov 2010, p.52]
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Again and again, Antony gestures toward a light: a crying light, a swanlight, a luminous impossibility that beckons, ultimately serving only to illuminate the sadness of this world.
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UncutAll the elements of old are there--his voice, those lyrical hankerings to melt away from the limits of life. [Oct 2010, p.85]
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Under The RadarWhile the songs of Swanlights play like a logical extension of the progression from the last two albums by Antony and the Johnsons, they also feel like a possible conclusion, and maybe even a necessary one. [Fall 2010, p. 58]
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Swanlights is seemingly effortless - the mark of a master at work.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 32
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Mixed: 4 out of 32
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Negative: 2 out of 32
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Oct 11, 2011
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Oct 22, 2010
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Jan 31, 2014