I Am A Bird Now

I don't know when a voice touched me as wholly as Antony's does.

This is tough, honest, uncompromising beauty and the next great voice in music. [Apr 2005, p.86]

I Am A Bird Now is a beautiful, emotive, glorious, and sometimes sinister album that will top many a critic's list come the end-of-year polls, and justifiably so.

Scarily intimate and irresistibly beautiful. [Mar 2005, p.92]

A profoundly emotional, uncynical brand of songwriting that showcases Antony’s obsession with nature.

As whole, the record is hardly notable for its special guests; the beauty of Antony's singing, the ferociousness of his delivery, the profundity of his songs, and the unflinching nature make the disc truly transcend such.

This will surely be counted as one of the most remarkable, individual, and adorable albums of the year.

This could have been camp on a Himalayan scale. Its strength is that it's anything but. [#255, p.51]

I Am a Bird Now is a sweet, sumptuous brace of noir-laced cabaret pop, distinctly out of step with just about every other album released this year.

The whole of the album is stunning and unique, and if the thematic gender-bending core of the album makes a few people ideologically shy away, then it’s truly a shame.

With this second full album, the singer and songwriter stakes a claim on a unique and fascinating turf, a sort of avant-cabaret musical theater that embraces a David Lynch-like moodiness and experimental-folk mystery, intimate confession and theatrical grandeur. [20 Mar 2005]

The ultimate draw is Antony's voice, and within the first two seconds of the album, it should be very clear to even the most unaware newbies that Antony has an amazing Nina Simone/Brian Ferry/Jimmy Scott vibrato, a multi-octave siren that would sound painfully lovely no matter what he was saying. Lucky for us, he fills that promise with worthy syllables.

It could have been mawkish, but the sentiments--and Antony's trembling falsetto--are so honest, you love it despite your jaded self. [4 Feb 2005, p.133]

Haunting and affecting.

Even in duets with [Wainwright and Boy George], Antony is the dominant voice of solitude and agonized waiting. [10 Feb 2005, p.84]

Antony's musical presence haunts and hypnotizes long after he's left the stage.

The true star is Antony's raw, emotional voice, one in which you can almost hear actual feelings being conveyed.

You get the impression that the artist is truly a giving soul, even if his gift is in the form of an emotionally wrenching, uncomfortably confessional record.

Majestic while confronting his mortal fears on the gospel-hued Hope There's Someone, childlike and life-affirming on For Today I Am a Boy, he is never less than a class act.

His voice must be heard to be believed. [Apr 2005, p.105]

I Am A Bird Now is a beautiful-sounding record, and though it doesn’t contain anything as remarkable and emotionally piercing as the debut’s “Cripple and the Starfish,” it nonetheless reveals a band and lead artist refining a musical universe populated by drag queens, cabaret dancehalls and a tolerant and open community.

His simple, unadorned songs of longing, belonging and love are so striking that contributions from such distinctive guests... pass almost unnoticed. [Apr 2005, p.118]

Antony has found a voice that expresses what it feels like to be trapped in that gray area between misery and rage.

Antony flourishes like a rare orchid in a New York hothouse, brandishing his voice like so many delicate petals. [#14, p.120]

Antony and the talented Johnsons brilliantly evoke the grandeur and dolor of cocktail hour ennui.

For what it lacks in consistency, I Am A Bird Now gains in being, even at its most tedious of moments, an interesting and thematically compelling listen.

These bluesy spirituals are so raw they bleed. [Mar 2005, p.136]

Guaranteed to leave you speechless, one way or another. [12 Mar 2005, p.58]