The Crying Light

Here’s something you don’t get very often: a follow-up to a word-of-mouth hit that doesn’t go for the commercial jugular. After the gushing praise, awards and half-a-million sales that greeted Antony’s last album, he appeared to be prime for the spit ‘n’ polish treatment; weird bits ironed out and mass-marketed to Ray LaMontagne fans. Rejoice: The Crying Light is mercifully, almost defiantly, low-key.

Let us not lose sight of just how high the stakes are here: I Am A Bird Now sits alongside fellow baroque masterpieces Funeral and Ys in the pantheon of the decade’s very best records. If Antony were to suffer bland-out for mass appeal it would not just disappoint, it would hurt. Ye Gods, we need not have worried, he has produced another stunner. The instrumentation is spare (although the musicianship from The Johnsons remain superb) the emphasis is on restraint, and the overall effect is wondrous. Kicking off with two unadorned ballads - ‘Her Eyes are Underneath The Ground’ and ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’ – may initially sound underwhelming, but their gentle beauty is soon revealed.

The dramatics, when they do arrive, are rendered all the more potent by their hushed surroundings. ‘Kiss My Name’s’ swirling, swoonsome strings are a delight, but the clear standout is ‘Aeon’, which puts Antony’s voice in an unusual (for him) setting – against a circling, hypnotic guitar groove. Apparently he is ‘learning to stop despising’ the guitar. He should learn quickly, because the sound is fantastic.

Indeed the only thing missing is the what-is-that surprise at hearing such a strange, otherworldly voice. It’s another superb album, then, from a unique talent, and one who remains committed to his own artistic vision. Comparisons with the likes of Rufus Wainwright (too vain) and Devandra Banhart (too jokey) feel misplaced; only Joanna Newsom’s rapturous orchestral folk can get close. Hot on the heels of Merriwether Post Pavilion, it’s the second great record of 2009. And we haven’t even dispensed with January yet.