Written by Michael Cranston

I wanted my interview to be different. A Google search will return about a dozen interviews with Antony Hegarty of Antony And The Johnsons from this year alone; all peppered with facts and stories of his latest album The Crying Light. After reading a few, one can easily uncover meanings behind his songs and his sources of inspiration. I, however, wanted to go deeper.
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“Hope there’s someone to take care of me when I die,” sang Anthony Hegarty on 2005’s breakthrough I Am A Bird Now. “I need another world/ This one’s nearly gone,” he sings now on The Crying Light. These lyrics encompass the central difference between the two releases: the former, a confessional journey of personal and sexual identity, inwardly focused intended for cathartic release; the latter, Antony’s reflection on the changing world environment and his own relationship with it. This theme, especially analogized through his maternal and paternal relationships, is at the forefront of this record. Opener “Her Eyes Underneath the Ground”, whose soft piano introduces Antony’s quavering voice, deals with all these elements. Even Antony admits it; initially a song about his mother, he began feeling it was more about his mother’s relationship with her own mother, then it became about our relationship with ecology.
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Antony and the Johnsons‘ new video for the single “Epilepsy Is Dancing” from the Secretly Canadian released (as of yesterday [January 20]) The Crying Light, features — among other things — intricately crafted masks, flowers and butterflies dripping from Antony Hegarty’s lips and vibrantly painted (sometimes nude) bodies undulating on the floor.
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