Antony And The Johnsons

Unexpectedly tying in with our Election-themed articles, DiS reports on Antony's phenomenal performance with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) at the Barbican, debuting material from the follow-up to his Mercury Prize-winning album, but also giving us an impromptu speech demanding much more from the world than mere "Hope for Change".

Some of you might be expecting a continuation of the _Another World_ EP review; reading this for clues about the imminent double-album The Crying Light (due 2009), following up the Mercury Prize-winning I Am a Bird Now (2004). In a sense, then, this was already set to be one of the major musical events of the year, but few would have expected Antony's closing speech, which made this one of those great moments when the performance so transcends entertainment that it re-asserts the musician's role to establish our place in history. First, though, it's worth pointing out that this performance is Antony with the LSO, not "backed by". This isn't Deep Purple or Eric Clapton, given extra-bombast by the Royal Philharmonic. As modern orchestral music, this isn't a world away from Rachel's or Supersilent, in places, but you can say – almost empirically – that it's 10x better for having more players to add more detail.

Opening with a new song, Antony's completely in the dark – imposing, and wearing some kind of robe or gown, but very much a spectre. His voice is everywhere in the darkness. The music itself has a steady, Phillip Glass-like pulse; it's subtle, confined to a single plane as it were, but Antony demonstrates astonishing command by developing melodies with half and quarter-notes. The words tell us it's "new" – one of the recurrent motifs in the set – although it must be another world so new there are only notes to describe it, as yet. The second song is similarly restrained, but offers more of a narrative – introducing the recurrent motif of a turtledove, and sketching out a prairie with bolder swells of strings. The music is closer to Ralph Vaughan Williams, who integrated the English folksong into classical music. The third song is the magnificent 'Cripple and the Starfish', and at last a spotlight comes up, revealing Antony. The darkness wasn't about disowning the songs – this is his most candid song about the ecstasy of masochism. Like the next song ('For Today, I Am A Boy'), the topline melody may seem stronger on the older songs, but Antony's live-vocals are consistently more subtle and exploratory than on the albums, perhaps so as to approximate the effect of the dual vocal lines; their melodies pushing and pulling at each other. The new ones will take some growing into, and Antony wants us to hear the whole orchestra, rather than use them to bolster him, which makes it a little hard to guess at the sound of the new album – of which we may be hearing a small and unrepresentative portion (6 songs?).

Nonetheless, the LSO interpret the material with enormous imagination and sympathy. Various songs are led by oboe, harpsichord, harp; the arrangement always sensitive to the solo instrument. Coming after an impeccable version of 'Rapture', 'Another World' is substantially different, with layers of drones, micro-tones apart – slightly like The Dream Syndicate (John Cale's, not Steve Wynn's). The interpolation of the Lord's Prayer, at the end of 'Rapture', slightly inflects the meaning of the latter song, but more of that below (and in the EP review). Many people's highlight will have been the cover of 'Crazy in Love' by Beyoncé & Jay-Z. There's a ripple of laughter within a few lines, as the pop-fans get it, just like the laughter after the trite opening lines of an earlier song (I love you, you fulfil me, etc.) that turned out to be 'I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy.' Moving in the opposite direction to Beck's frenzied guitar version, Antony & the LSO re-invent the absurdly sexy pop classic as something like 'Street Spirit' – the arpeggio ticking away the most intense moments of your life, with multi-instrument drones that match the synth line of Radiohead's (arguably, most exquisite) song.

It's at the beginning of the encore that Antony that tells us what it means to return to England. To fully do justice to his speech, you'd need to record all the hesitations (choosing how to refer to himself, and who he is, and how he feels about his – you know). You'd need the duration of pauses, and the quaver in his voice that makes you feel emotionally fragile, yourself, in sympathy. He's already said, in an interview, it's going to feel like re-visiting his mother's womb, after so long in New York (building a following among club performers… and then prominent figures more or less associated with alternative lifestyles… and then just about anyone who isn't actually wearing a pointy hood right now, and setting fire to crosses). This is only the pre-amble, though – reminding you his whole life has led up to this moment, mostly by letting us hear his speaking voice: warm, mellifluous and captivating(the reason we're here), even when it's almost choked up.

He tells us the next song is 'Her Eyes Are Under the Ground' – he wrote it with his brother, about his mother's perception of her mother.

He gets more confident. He tells us we all have mothers… and they had mothers… and they each came from a womb… which you can imagine stretching back like tunnels… to the beginning of history.

He jokes: you all came from mothers, and that makes for a lot of wombs in this room…!

He tells us he's 37 (half of the three-score-and-ten?), and he's been thinking a lot about being the last in line. He's the last in line because he's – you know. He's also been thinking about – (What? The final silence? Whether that silence has meaning, the way a musical rest has meaning?)

He tells us "We're at a critical point."

He tells us we're running out of time. He sounds like he might be angry, not tearful.

He tells us he's known about how humanity has been threatening the environment so long, he used to talk to his grandmother about it in the early 90s; his grandmother said she read something about Global Warming, and how she should knit the birds some sweaters because they don't know when to fly south for winter, and they'll be caught in the frost, when it comes. (We laugh.)

He tells us his grandmother used to read the tea-leaves when she was young, and was beaten for acting like a witch, and told she'd go to Hell. (He pauses – he wouldn't have gone down too well, either, half a century ago.)

He tells us _"the whole Hell thing's only been around a couple-thousand years, so when people say the world's going to Hell…?"_ He pauses. "Aren't we all looking at our tea-leaves right now?"

We laugh. His words release something in us. They release us from anger, which he could have pushed us to feel, and the uncertainty about whether to yell or keep silent… but they don't release us from responsibility. (We're at a critical point.)

That was Antony & the LSO, at the Barbican. We're at a critical point. Yes, Barack Obama could be "Leader of the Free World" within a few days, but the fact that this isn't even mentioned tells us just how wide Antony's vision really is. It may not be up there with MLK's "I Had a Dream" speech (which carries so much of Western – "white" – literary history in it), but with its appeal to remember the women before us, and the world beneath all of us, it's a powerful moment.

The final song is 'River of Sorrow'. The singer, _"late at night / all dolled up like Christ"_ asking us if we can "see the light at the end of the dark passageway". It's a perfect ending.