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Again and again, Antony gestures toward a light: a crying light, a swanlight, a luminous impossibility that beckons, ultimately serving only to illuminate the sadness of this world.
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Dec 21, 2010Swanlights may not be the best of his works, but it is a welcome excursion along the path of his career.
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Even when Swanlights doesn't always take corporeal form-that looseness also means several of its melodies simply fade into the shadows-Antony's voice remains a spectral wonder.
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Oct 27, 2010The styles that parade their way onto Swanlights would probably be the most noticeably diverse change from what happened on previous albums.
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Swanlights is seemingly effortless - the mark of a master at work.
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Swanlights reveals a portrait of the artist looking upward and onward beyond anguish.
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Swanlights, the fourth full-length by Antony and the Johnsons, reveals that 2009's The Crying Light was a stepping stone that furthered his sophistication as a songwriter, arranger, and singer.
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On Swanlights, Antony takes a cue from Hamlet: the purpose of art is to hold a mirror up to nature.
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Swanlights succeeds exactly where you might not expect it to: Hegarty sounds content, revitalised. This is a record that revels in a sense of joy.
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From yellowed headlines, nature-magazine clippings, marker scribblings, torn paper, even Kurt Cobain's visage, Antony extracts a poignancy that beautifully matches his music.
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UncutAll the elements of old are there--his voice, those lyrical hankerings to melt away from the limits of life. [Oct 2010, p.85]
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It's a difficult accomplishment, encompassing pop and the avant-garde while also featuring a particularly striking element (in this case, Hegarty's voice); all three are well-represented here.
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With his fourth album Swanlights, Antony Hegarty has created his most arresting set of songs to date.
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MojoDeath, love, the ghosts they leave behind: these are grand themes, and Hegarty channels their spirit with magical grace. [Nov. 2010, p. 100]
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Q MagazineHe'll always be too mannered for mainstream acceptance, but there's unarguable brilliance here. [Nov 2010, p.105]
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A remarkable work overall, Swanlights proves-yet again--that this odd duck has always known true beauty.
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Swanlights might be Antony's richest album yet, with musical and thematic charms that take their time to take their hold.
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Dec 23, 2010He captures the otherworldly more often than not. Occasionally, though, the songs overreach or miss some central point.
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On Swanlights, Hegarty's fourth album under the Antony and the Johnsons moniker, the darkness lifts, and the singer sounds almost buoyant.
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The WireDec 22, 2010Fans are unlikely to be disappointed, but if you're expecting a new direction, look somewhere else. [Nov 2010, p.52]
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Oct 27, 2010Swanlights is less straightforward than his other records and more operatic. It's still astonishingly beautiful.
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Hegarty's fourth album strictly follows the template laid down by his previous records: fragile, sombre and wistful, always dominated by that extraordinary tremulous voice, seemingly forever on the brink of bursting into tears.
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The challenge for Antony Hegarty is just how best to use that quivering, purring, sobbing, ecstatic, altogether original voice.
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A record of beauty and balance, Swanlights cements Hegarty as the transgender: artsy and challenging enough for the Guardian chin-strokers, but with enough hushed melodic wallop to seduce all-comers.
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Familiar themes still surface, with the natural world continuing to loom large in Antony's conscience, but much of Swanlights is ambiguous and less easy to decipher.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 32
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Mixed: 4 out of 32
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Negative: 2 out of 32
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Oct 11, 2011
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Oct 22, 2010
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Jan 31, 2014