Swanlights

Uncut (p.85) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "'Christina's Farm' has the restful, enigmatic, sepia quality of a 19th-century photograph." Mojo (Publisher) (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Death, love, the ghosts they leave behind: these are grand themes, and Hegarty channels their spirit with magical grace." Clash (Magazine) - "[A]stonishingly beautiful....The title track is amazing: dark, scary even, and gives everything around it a perspective."

Swanlights, the fourth full-length by Antony and the Johnsons, reveals that 2009s The Crying Light was a stepping stone that furthered Antony (now Anohni)s sophistication as a songwriter, arranger, and singer. While that albums tunes about acceptance, death, transformation, and loss were added to immeasurably by Nico Muhlys gorgeous string arrangements, Swanlights employs the same band, this time augmented by a chamber orchestra. Anohni uses her voice on this set as much as a textural element in her songs as she does to deliver poetic, and sometimes head-scratchingly obtuse lyrics, like Elect the salt mother, for she is a selective Christ. These songs engage with popular genres from folk-rock to grand classical chamber orchestral, but they do touch on vanguard art song as well. Their themes often comment on the natural world -- a huge part of Anohnis moral conscience -- but lyrically, this is a more difficult album to pin down. Album-opener Everything Is New features one of her standard tropes: using a repetitive piano line and her voice to play upon the title in various ways, breaking the words up in various combinations and cadences to create a mantra-like effect before bringing in the band, for a near-modal exploration to hang her lyrics on. The Great White Ocean follows it, still using that theme, before becoming its own lovely, near-nursery rhyme; it sounds like a prayer adorned with acoustic guitars, Julia Kents cello and Anohnis vocal softly moan between and after the verses. I’m in Love feels a bit like Steve Reich scoring an early-60s Doc Pomus song, with winds, strings, upright bass, drums, and piano all melding in an almost fingerpopping, soulful anthem to romance. The Spirit Was Gone is a haunting meditation on death, with Anohni accompanied by Kent and a small orchestra, but its countered by the almost shimmering pop of Thank You for Your Love. The strangeness of Fletta, an Icelandic duet with Bjork, is in a genre all its own and departs markedly from the rest of the albums contents. The voices are accompanied only by Anohnis piano. The sparse phrasing is nonetheless insistent, its melody walking the margins of folk and classical minimalism (if the latter was heard by Kurt Weill). Classical aspirations continue on Salt Silver Oxygen, but these songs as a whole feel like a place where Van Dyke Parks might be entertained by the spring-like harmonies of Vaughan Williams songs. Ultimately, in mood, ambition, and execution, Swanlights is a testament to Anohnis increasingly iconoclastic -- yet gorgeously accessible -- brand of art pop. ~ Thom Jurek

＜天使の歌声＞と世界が激賞する天才、アントニーが率いるバンドの1年半ぶりとなる4作目。重厚な作風だった昨年の「The Crying Light」に比べるとずいぶん風通しの良い仕上がりで、荘重なムードの中にも草花の芽吹きのような開放感と喜びが満ちている。ピアノやストリングスのカラフルな響きに呼応してか、アントニーの歌声もいつになく優しいんだよな～（涙）。ビョークとのデュエット“Fletta”も染みちゃって……。
bounce (C)田中幹也