Antony & The Johnsons – Another World EP

And so we find our favorite asexual antihero here as morose as ever and pining for another plane on which to reside – yea, Another World – and yet gone are the pretensions and the indulgent warbling (well, mostly) that threatened at times to capsize Antony’s last cabaret offering.

This 5-track interlude to 2005’s I Am a Bird Now and the forthcoming The Crying Light LP is rife with stocking- and heart-stuffers alike. Forgive the embellishments, but your admiration of sheer beauty can’t help but bulge after repeated listens to Another World’s quintet of spare, mournful songs.

The title track injects an apocalyptic sadness and a dread at the start. (It’d make for perfect soundtracking to the impending film version of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-winning novel, The Road.) “I need another world; this one’s nearly gone,” Antony intones, his voice dripping with fatigue and resignation. And yet, hope. He sings of missing the trees, the animals, and the people he knows. For this one, it always seems a matter of leaning forward and yet regarding the rearview mirror, of straddling two drastically different doorways, of this life and the next or of this real and all-too-brutal world and another mythological one, a world devoid of pain.

But now where would Antony and his Johnsons be without the problem of pain? Nowhere we’d want to be, probably, and hardly somewhere we’d want to listen to him, honestly. True, he got his hysterical hijinks largely worked out in that delectable foray into emo-disco pop earlier this year, in his collaborations on the Hercules and Love Affair album. He’s not without his winks, though, as evidenced by the simple lyrical nod to his sad-sack M.O. that opens another piano ballad, “Crackagen”: “Poor me.” Indeed. He’s nothing if not self-aware, and we’ll take it. As long as he acknowledges this, we’ll gladly keep sipping his sorry Kool-Aid.

Antony’s truly reined in what was sometimes previously a grating instrument, his voice. Dunno if Hercules’ dance-floor habits provided the therapy he needed or what, but glad to reap the sound now of his unadorned vocals, dew-eyed and yet fresh as ever. This is most evident on the bouncy, saxed-up “Shake That Devil,” this EP’s surprising, free-jazz-infused centerpiece. Consider the words: “That pig took everything I had/ That pig, that pig/ That pig made me feel so bad … Shake that pig out of the bush, now let’s give that pig a push.” Antony and a spry saxophone duet to great effect here, the singer alternately describing a personal demon (or a scornful lover?) as a devil, a dog, a bird, and a pig. The imagery works, and the music wows. Antony is (gasp) having fun. It’s an ear-widening, out-of-character step ahead for Antony, a resounding success hereby nominated for best musical stretch of the year.

But back to the plaintive piano balladry after that. “Sing For Me” and the exquisite closing track, “Hope Mountain,” bookend “Shake That Devil” well in light of how this mini-set commenced. The stop-start keys on “Sing For Me” supplement the grim lyric about putting mama in the ground with a wry playfulness. Then “Hope Mountain” takes over with the narrative of a girl raised to the apex of the mountain (of her very existence?) by “scores of soaring eagles.” As with most Antony ditties, the song goes nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

“Another World” runs concurrently to I Am a Bird’s “Hope There’s Someone” in a way, in its at-least-metaphoric death wish. The difference? Antony alone needs another world to inhabit here, whereas he used to hope there would be someone nice to hold when tired. Where Bird had him (and, hilariously and wonderfully, Boy George) declaring love for a lady on “You Are My Sister,” here he’s all about shaking out devils, the common curs in our midst that plague us. What are these devils, certain persons or mere complacencies that bind and pull down? They are, as Antony speak-sings them into existence so as to destroy them, whatever you want them to be. And don’t want.

Ironically, Another World bodes well for the future, for what The Crying Light harbors in 2009 for Antony’s legions of fans, devils and birds alike.

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