Antony and the Johnsons

Antony's voice pretty much knocks you dead on your feet with its gut-wrenching power -- not many men can sing like Nina Simone. But his is a singular voice, and on his sophomore album, he takes care to wrap it in fragile, piano-led arrangements. This incredible record also features appearances by Lou Reed, Boy George, Rufus Wainwright and Devendra Banhart.

Antony is a ghost-white giant with a voice of singular majesty -- an instrument of delicacy
and rapture in which Nina Simone, Morrissey and Joni Mitchell seem to inhabit the same
breath. A harmony-vocal angel on Lou Reed's 2003 tour, Antony stole the encore each
night, kissing anguished life into the Velvet Underground sigh "Candy Says." His soft but
dogged longing for transformation in that song illuminates the whole of his secon... More >

Whose voice touches who is personal, but that doesn't mean Antony will ever reach as many humans as Aretha Franklin or Billie Holiday, and up against the archer Bryan Ferry, the artier Rufus Wainwright, and the grander Nina Simone, objective physical differences manifest themselves: he's thinner, drier, more strained. Not only is his willingness to express emotion commoner than indie denizens imagine, his failure to undercut that emotion with irony or humor is a spiritual weakness. Right, he suffers. But billions of humans have it worse, and while we who are luckier are morally obliged to remember that, we're not obliged to empathize with any of them. Those convinced of the metaphoric-political centrality of transgender issues and the AIDS epidemic will feel Antony's songs. Those who don't should find a record they enjoy. (Grade - B-)