Itʼs sophomore time for this young, country tinged songsmith from Alabama. It was with relish that I approached listening to this, the follow up to 2010ʼs Paupers Field. In itself his debut was pretty marvellous and I could only hope that a LeBlanc with a few more road miles under his feet could deliver a bit more of the substance and weight that his Muscle Shoals/ Fame Studios background promised.

Job done. Cast the Same Old Shadow glides and sways with an effortless beauty and grace that sees him well on the way to standing shoulder to shoulder with his peers and influences from that great heritage.

Opener Part One: The End eases us into proceedings with gorgeous intent. Pedal steel, shimmering guitars and dreamy vocals drift and play with cinematic strings and a lazy shuffling beat. Itʼs a great indicator of things to come and youʼre not disappointed. The song Brother finds LeBlanc’s delicate fingerpicking and fragile voice playing a kind of musical tag with dirty guitars and Fleet Foxes-type big vocal breakdowns. Sublime and fucking stunning.

This genre of music doesnʼt necessarily need to offer anything new or left field. What it should have is a bit of validity and plenty of heart. This is what we find on songs like Where Are You Now and Comfort Me. Thereʼs none of the hubris and affected swagger so often found in this well furrowed musical field. In Dylan LeBlanc we find a man, if not at the peak of his craft, then at least in control of it and most definitely heading in the right direction.

Bravo sir, bloody bravo.

-Steve Manser-Knight-

Tread warily, record buyer. In an effort to have something – anything – fresh on the shelves to coincide with Antony’s Meltdown curatorship, along comes Cut the World. A selection of live recordings from Antony’s 2011 concert collaboration with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, bolstered by one new studio recording (the title track), it’s disappointingly less than the sum of its parts.

With very few, usually personal exceptions (we’ll stake a claim for Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Modern Lovers ‘Live’), the live album is, of course, invariably only of interest to the hardcore fan. Even what seemed in first person to be a phenomenal night out can often, with a click through YouTube a few days later, seem surprisingly mundane in the light of day.

In a misjudged focus on its star, Cut the World dispenses with crowd noise, fading at the close of each song before the applause kicks in. There’s no atmosphere. It’s only at the close, after a beautifully judged Twilight, that the cheering is allowed in. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know you’d been listening to a live album.

As a result, this record has no function. Antony & the Johnsons’ run of studio albums were never short of orchestral embellishments in the first place. These symphonic versions reveal little that wasn’t already present, and the uniformity of tone becomes soporific way before the close.

The spoken word piece Future Feminism, again recorded in concert, is also less interesting than this album’s compilers think it is. Antony talks softly and humorously through some of his opinions on gender, religion, environment and politics, and the audience laugh along, but there’s over seven minutes of this before an abrupt fade. He’s a thoughtful and generous speaker, but you wouldn’t want to hear it more than once.

Cut the World, the song, is gorgeous though. It should have been a single. The rest of this is b-sides.

Micachu’s arrival in 2009 with her debut Jewellery was nothing if not original. It was the sound of a twenty-two year old turning up at the studio with homemade instruments, songs with skewed structures and a crate-load of attitude.

And while we’ve had Chopped and Screwed in the interim to remind us of their undeterred blueprint of experimentalism Never takes deliberate sidesteps to avoid repetition. So where the debut, however uncompromising, was a fairly clean production, Never is not. Smothered with reverb and noise (and anything else at hand) to blur the individual instruments, the pop ethic has been tackled to the ground with a paper bag forced over its head. We can still hear it, just muffled and a little disgruntled.

Micachu (real name Mica Levi) started her musical journey as DJ and MC on the grime and garage scene. This feels like a product from street level. It’s impressive and gutsy. Michachu and her Shapes could have opted for any producer anywhere in the world at this stage. Never, I hear them cry.

Opening with Easy, the noise instantly smashes the track. The restless and hopping rhythms that Micachu and The Shapes have claimed as their own form of polluted pop never look to collapse under the bewailing waves of sound. It’s a different story on Waste – an industrial riot with a frenetic attitude.

Tracks like Low Dogg drop a hip hop beat, yet the distorted guitars (that were acoustic back in 2009) and crunching synths don’t let it get too excited. Holiday meanwhile boasts a chorus you might actually start humming a few hours later. Yet it’s You Know that stands as the biggest token of pop, with manic refrains on a straight-up verse.

Micachu and The Shapes aren’t about to make life easy for you, but you know that already. But however they dress it up, rough it up or throw it up they’re always gonna oscillate wildly with some infectious rhythms and smart-arse rhymes.

-Dave Taylor-

There’s a pretty familiar urban feel to Pop Etc, in the sense that it features similar sounds and production techniques to those you would find in the US Top Forty.

R.Y.B. (Rock Your Body) sets the tone for the whole album perfectly. The tempos alternate from fast, to slow, then fast, then slow. I’ve gotta say, I’d probably come back to this record fairly often, even if I wasn’t reviewing it, as it blends elements of that contemporary production style in an intuitive and interesting way.

I’m still quite into it, even by track ten, C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-E, despite the auto tuned Cher-esque vocal, due to the fact it sounds like some crazy African jump up track. Think of the intro to The Lion King soundtrack, “Haaaaaaayeeendaaaneeemmmwarrr”, or whatever it is. Charming.

The depth of the actual songwriting is also commendable. We have some songs which ebb like 80’s throwbacks and some which diligently tick the ‘here and now’ box. Mostly it’s relieving not to hear another compressed, wall of noise style, massive synth used for even more bleeding ‘pop’ music which probably won’t actually get anywhere near the charts.

Samples are used increasingly creatively throughout the album. I guess one might say this is down to Pop Etc’s background as a more straight up indie rock band. I’d probably agree with that. The music utilises alternative sounds to the average indie band, but throws things around more fearlessly.

It also has to be said that much of the songs are unashamedly cheesy as hell. Lyrics like “I wrote this for you ‘cos you needed proof” and “I called in the night, I said let’s not fight” are sung without a sense of irony. Tread carefully guys, if you release another totally pop record, people might think you’re actually serious in your new direction. One album departing from your sound, making all the bloggers say “WTF”, is fine, but make the next one count.

-Andy Halliday-

Last time I counted there were nine members in Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The troupe have been rambling since 2007, releasing their exuberant acoustic indie jaunt, Up from Below, back in 2009. Since then, their front man Alex Ebert tried his hand at a solo record, Alexander, which took an even more ramshackle tone – and featured some of the best tracks of his career.

Ebert’s songs and sounds stem, in the main, from the realm of folk – yet his playful nature and resounding enthusiasm means he won’t sit still, colouring the songs with his current idols and favourite genres. Opening with Man on Fire Ebert sounds like Neil Diamond fronting a rabble of procession musicians high on life. From there we have a run of tracks that share very little in common – other than Ebert’s always likeable performance.

The swaying ship that is Mayla brims with acoustic serenity, yet is marred by some electric guitar jazz riffing and a fairly deep void where the melody should take hold (I hear hints of Quinn the Eskimo and Lola, yet it’s far too indecisive). Then there is a reggae-come-tribal write off called One Love To Another – yes Marley is referenced in the title and indeed the hook.

Hear also the female fronted, soul-crashing Joplin ballad Fiya Wata, or Cat Stevens doing George Formby via country gospel on I Don’t Wanna Pray. Ebert and the band are submerged in the moment which is often endearing – yet the songs fall randomly and too often lack the quality we expect.

-Zac Cohen-

Firstly the name: Radlands. Well, obviously it’s where Malick’s Badlands and Keith Richards’ Sussex estate Redlands are amalgamated – that’s official by the way. The group headed to Austin to record this collection, so the title kind of makes sense: English guitar band wandering the Colorado landscape and all that.

After the first two tracks you start to believe they might actually pull this off, ably dropping some desert-outlaw type influences into their indie make-up. You Had Me At Hello cruises the dusty back bars with wide open eyes, The Eagles circle somewhere nearby. The loss of innocence within the song’s narrative is a parallel to a group willing to camp out in the States and play it their way – respect is due.

But there is a slow downhill momentum from around track four, which results in a pile-up of songs that just sound wrong. Greatest Hits is like a D version of Rafferty’s Stuck In the Middle with You. Even worse is The Hale Bop, some semi-funk, 70s hybrid that just derails the authenticity the group had almost nailed.

From here on in the spell is broken. Take Me Where The Roses Grow is an awkward duet that is no match for the Laural Canyon back catalogue, and Sister Everett is mid-paced bar-rock and bears none of the Austin, vale-amp warmth we had fallen for back at the start.

Maybe heading into the big wide open seemed like a good idea when originally conceived, but by the time we get to Lost in Austin the title seems a little too close to home.

-William Bell-

We kind of thought Howler’s debut, America Give Up, may turn out to be a solid prospect – straight-up indie rock with an injection of prosaic energy. But after several listens our hopes were crushed by, among other things, the band’s repeated insistence on re-tuning The Strokes.

Okay, it may not be the case on every track, and there’re moments, had they stood alone, we might have been howling along with. But that’s by the by – the Minneapolis five-piece blew it when they chose to skate through each and every track with little care for a melody, opting to frolic in the shallow-end of the musical pool.

Opening with Beach Sluts, it’s pretty clear where the vocals are going to sit – just underneath the frantic guitar chord play, which sets off The Strokes’ alarm soon enough. So even though the verses try a different rhythm, throwing up a summer riff or two, it quickly falls backwards into a raucous piece of disposable Libertine love.

There’s a bit of glam lurking in the distorted waves heard on Back to the Grave – the high-end vocal coos giving the band a much better shot at being individual. And the upbeat and hearty rocker This One’s Different is infectiously upbeat, if nothing else.

But with the muddied, overcast moments like Too Much Blood offering little other than a dark corner in which to hide, and Free Drunk, just another empty vessel highlighting the group’s lack of original hooks, this is a record that has borrowed far too much to find its own personality.

-Zach Cohen-

Jeffrey Lewis’ latest album, A Turn In The Dream-Songs, exhibits all the trademark lyrical humour and self-depreciation now anticipated in the New York anti-folk hero’s every release. He reveres us with stories about bad break-ups and suicide attempts gone awry – all with the kind of wit you’d expect from someone who once sang about getting forcefully bummed and beaten by Will Oldham.

The first song, To Go and Return, is an introduction, an early morning reverie, to his world. His turn of a phrase always pleases, and he’s equipped with a voice that elicits laughter. How Can It Be wraps us up in sing-song pop, where Lewis opens up about his insecurities, mocking his own feelings of inadequacy in a past relationship. He’s never one to lie to anyone about his feelings.

Boom Tube breaks away from the more twee aspects of the album, bringing delivering a short, folksy, instrumental. Try It Again is a head-bobbing ode to trying things again and not giving up – minus the cheesy, self-help bullshit. When You’re By Yourself is a comical tale about what you should do if you’re dining alone at a restaurant. It seems like an almost nonsensical worry, but it’s something everyone thinks about. At least we do.

An overall favourite is Cult Boyfriend, a song you can listen to and wonder how self-effacing Lewis can be. He’s aware that he’s whining about not being über famous, but he’s willing to make fun of himself and his situation. Something we can all take heart from.

-Alma Verdejo-

Let’s deal with this: The Strange Boys is an awkward band name. It’s hopelessly naive and sounds like something your dad would pick for you. As such, it’s perfect for a band that seems to be pulled directly from the 60s. Live Music (as in “I live for music”, not “I like my music live”) is a countryish, proto-psychedelic album of warm, fuzzy vocals, honky-tonk pianos and twangy guitars. Which is kind of what we’ve come to expect from the Austin band.

If you can look past the groan-inducing titles of some of the songs, like Walking Two By Two, Over The River And Through The Woulds and You Take Everything For Granite When You’re Stone, there’s actually a lot to enjoy in this record. It sounds very homely and organic but there’s none of the self-indulgence that you might expect. The writing’s got tighter, and there are plenty of hooks being hammered home – and there’s no obvious filler.

Singer Ryan Sambol has always had a nice garage edge to his voice and has a good line in charmingly pithy lyrics. Favorites here include: “I’m surprised you’re still alive, considering all the time you’ve spent in the middle of the road”, and “There are many ways to say hello, that was one way of doing so”.

This is without doubt the band’s finest record to date, mixing it up with the slow and fast. Many of the songs rattle through at a cheery pace but then we get to tracks like You And Me, a quiet and considered bossa nova piece, which is a nice listen but a brave commitment for a band who’ve always hinted at their punk roots. In the end it’s moments like this that lift this album. They could have just bashed out garage and country tunes for half an hour and been great at it but there’s clearly something more ambitious going on, even if you couldn’t really call any of it experimental.

-Toby Dore-

As front-man for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Alexander Ebert explores a whole range of genres and styles – just flick through their ‘Up from Below’ album. His home-recorded, debut solo record as Alexander continues the trend, though admittedly most tracks start from the acoustic guitar upwards. So just as you try and corner it into freak folk it slithers past you in a soulful fashion, or quick talks like a new Paul Simon piece. It makes for an impressive, though slightly disjointed record.

It does boast some real highlights though, most notably ‘Truth’, a track that is up there as one of the best of 2011. From its brushed rhythm and desolate whistle, to the fast-talking verse that culminates with Ebert wailing intermittently over the delicate, female backing. Anyone that can write such an impassioned track has our attention all day long.

As a vocalist he changes with the music. Check the Dylan-like delivery in ‘Old Friend’ – a warbling, slow-burning ballad that rumbles rather than rambles. The aforementioned Paul Simon influence makes an appearance in the ‘Graceland’ goes bohemian track ‘In the Twilight’. ‘Remember Our Heart’ is a big street band that booms steadily past: the vocal line banding between elongated cries to a swiftly delivered chorus. ‘Glimpses’ aches with soul: the simply-picked guitar turns slowly, forcing the front-man to push onwards with his wavering emotion.

There is little doubt Alexander is a great talent; he has more ideas than he knows what to do with. But by squeezing so many of them into forty minutes of music he breaks any potential flow. On the other hand it is his restless nature that can be thanked for moments like ‘Truth’. It leaves Bowlegs resigned to the fact that, with Alexander, you have to take the rough with the smooth. WB

Why Alela has decided to record a set of songs so devoid of personality or melody is beyond Bowlegs. Her first proper studio album, ‘The Pirate’s Gospel’, was a quietly stirring piece of American folk that had grit and an earthy realism. Yet a few albums on and it feels like a different artist.

The musicians come across like uninterested session players – thumbing through the American folk/country riff catalogue for ideas – clocking out when the clock strikes five. Just take a listen to ‘Long Way Down’. The rhythm section boasting a Young’s ‘Harvest’ styled honesty, with Alela cruising effortlessly atop. Then we get the clichéd guitars, unrushed, uninspired and overlong. Bowlegs is quite frankly bemused.

Don’t get us wrong, we could listen to Alela’s voice all day long: it’s a unique and special instrument. It could lift the most mundane of songs, which is kind of lucky. Nothing here competes with the Californian singer’s past ventures. ‘Heartless Highways’ comes closer than most. Quirky rhythms fill the verse, opening up with a drawn out and yearning chorus.

‘Rising Greatness’ is Diane at her absolute best, letting her tones break and rebuild, the acoustic running the show. ‘Suzanne’ has a more downbeat melody. Again the voice is a strong and wilful presence, bringing the track to life. Yet over the course of the record the tinkling pianos, warm pedal-steels and obligatory mandolins duly suffocate most potential moments – ensuring all remains far too passive and respectable.

This album is unlikely to offend. In fact, it will settle quite nicely into the background. As for essential Alela Diane, this comes nowhere near. WB

DJ Screw is often credited with developing a technique known as ‘chopping and screwing’. It’s all about halving tempos and skipping beats – which in turn affects portions of the original music. This live performance from Mica (aka Micachu) and the London Sinfonietta is in someway based around the technique – hence the title. But truth be told, Bowlegs remains unsure when or where the chopping and screwing actually takes place. This is a slow, slightly discordant at times, experimental set of music – it’s also quite hard to listen to.

Mica has proved herself an innovator, her debut was brimming with originality – and again here she pushes herself into unknown territory. Even the instruments she uses are handmade. But experimenting can be restricting; Mica is somewhat of a diluted presence, lost in a dirge of lowly strings and ambient, rather than melodic, arrangements. Too much relies on the incidental variety, even the opening track, ‘State of New York’, relegates the London musician’s voice to a mere, ghostly backing.

As ‘Everything’ bangs and clicks into earshot it feels like the collaboration has found its feet. The singer falls with striking strings close behind, a vocal line finally given the chance to concentrate the music. It is a short-lived moment of prosaic proportions, followed faintly by haunting whispers (‘Freaks’) and incidental nothingness (‘Medicine’).

‘Loww Dogg’ is a more menacing piece, also another high – screeched violins and low Cellos sway violently with the upfront voice-led melody. As a complete set it certainly occupies a unique space, even finding moments of beauty (hear the excellent ‘Fall’). But these are all too often punctuated with passages of experimental meander. It probably was more effective as a live performance, as a record it falls short of expectancy. DG

Anticipation is all too often followed by disappointment. Just ask The Strokes, a band forever compared to their landmark debut. Yet ‘Angles’, the New Yorkers’ fourth album, feels a little less burdened, lighter on its feet, a record with split personality.

Casablancas has brought his 80s synth collection, while Valensi and Hammond Jr push the guitars and Fraiture and Moretti keeping it as tight as ever. The one-two opening that is ‘Machu Pichu’ and ‘Under the Cover of Darkness’ proves a group of individuals can still sound like the band whose influence lives on. The former a laid back, reggae tinged, guitar-split saunter; the latter back on Strokes’ time: staccato verses and Casablanca’s encapsulated vocal calling across a barrage of strums and distortion.

Yet it isn’t all so effective. The keyboard soaked ‘Games’ flows like a chart-topper from 25 years back, while ‘You’re So Right’ is a Strokes song cloaked with an ominous free-fall of downward notes, closing guitars and little melody. The variation is impressive, but truth be told Bowlegs kind of hankered for the new wave guitar pop straight out of New York: cool and collective – which we don’t get enough of. ‘Take for a Fool’ is a highlight: guitar line follows vocal, vocal follows guitar – all party through the night in a Strokes’ only Style..

As an album this is slick stuff, from performance to production. Yet it feels far from vital. The songs just aren’t strong enough to compete with the impressive instrumentation. The solos, rhythms and Casablanca’s howling crescendo’s can only take us so far. Luckily it closes on the more soulful ‘Life is Simple in the Moonlight’, finding new depths through melancholic aches. An album split between restless, guitar cool and lightweight, plastic run-throughs. WB

Bowlegs often harks back to the earlier Decemberists’ records – before everything became a little bloated, before the tracks stretched over miles of conceptual greenery – of earthy attitude and reels of infectious song-writing. Admittedly the Portland band never relinquished their grasp of a good melody, whatever else fell by the roadside. ‘The King is Dead’ is not the group in concept mode, in fact this could be their simplest set of songs yet.

Each and every track digs into the folk laden land they have inhabited many times before, only this time they are going for the rootsier side of the soil. ‘Don’t Carry On’ stumbles through the speakers with its Neil Young beat and harmonica; ‘Rise to Me’, a sparser acoustic ballad, suggests a band which has matured slowly and wisely.

And as the songs throw in their trademark fiddle, along with healthy doses of mouth organ and accordion, they never put a foot wrong – which is maybe where they put a foot wrong. This is far too easy at times. ‘Rox in the Box’ stomps loudly on the ho down, ‘All Arise’ soon links arms and follows suit – neither offering any of the depth or narrative we have come to expect from Mr Meloy and company. The spirited ‘This is why we Fight’ has more of the minor key melancholy that produces the emotion from the band, and finds them pushing all the right Decemberist buttons. REM’s Peter Buck and Gillian Welch guest on the excellent ‘Down by the Water’: a faultless vocal backed ably by Welch as the fast-talking chorus streams across a wave of fiddles, strings and a low-end guitar solo.

The Decemberists are back where they belong, and though at times they play it little on the generic side, at least there is more to like than not. WB

There aren’t many bands out of the mainstream that can claim the kind of loyal support that British Sea Power have. The Brighton band’s fans are devoted to the music. Perhaps it’s because they know what they’re going to get. Five albums down the line and the band haven’t really deviated from the blueprints set out on 2003’s debut, ‘The Decline of British Sea Power’. It’s the U2 school of setting your stall out early and keeping it there come hell or high water. It’s the Oasis book of sticking to what you know. And there’s nothing really wrong with that. The fans like it – they have their t-shirts, they have their scarves: they show their support like steadfast indie puppies – throw us another album and we’ll fetch it with watery eyes and tongues-a-wagging.

This is in no way a bad thing; more bands could benefit from this kind of musical fidelity from audiences. The digital age has turned most of us into the most fickle sound whores, who play the field and will drop all interest in a band at the slightest hint of a battered fedora or something more zeitgeist. Haven’t released anything in three months – we don’t want to know.

BSP’s latest effort, ‘Valhalla Dancehall’, is exactly what you’d expect from a BSP album. There’s the familiar sound, the familiar production. If anything, there’s less urgency, less edge than you’ll find in the band’s earlier releases. The song-writing is solid and the lyrics are, as you’d expect, clever, occasionally witty and often affecting. There are some nice changes in pace: ‘Observe the Skies’ is all up-tempo indie pop with some Pixie-esque guitar moments, while following track ‘Cleaning Out the Rooms’ slows things down with an slow-building understated beauty. It’s solid stuff from a solid band.

The album suffers though, mainly due to many of the tracks sounding a bit samey (opener ‘Who’s in Control’ and ‘Mongk II’ stand out from the others though, mainly due to being better versions of the same song which plays throughout), and could have done with a few of the weaker tracks being culled before release.

If you’re a British Sea Power fan, you’re probably better off ignoring the mark given below. You’ll like the album – it’s right up your street. DS

The United States of America pictured in Julien Temple’s film ‘Requiem for Detroit’ is dying and decomposing; a mere rusted store sign swaying in the breeze. Warpaint create elegies for this America, and the sentiment of their work is chilled and sometimes chilling. Despite their years and glossy image, Warpaint are a band with dark hearts and an attitude borne of digging in your heels. Something messy and uncomfortable lingers here. These girls are ill with America – it has blown a storm of dust through their souls.

There is a hint of Goth buried within the overall sound. So maybe a teenage infatuation with the Cure has resulted in a lingering affair with the chorus pedal and echo, but the Warpaint sound has infinitely eclipsed their influences. Bowlegs are reminded by turns of the Rainoats, Fleet Foxes, Fleetwood Mac and Foals, but these comparisons are unsatisfactory, missing the truth that what we have here is a band formed of four unique musicians complete with an electrifying internal tension.

They continue the Modernist credo of disowning the idea of the frontperson – all singing, overlapping different points of view. The bass often takes the lead lines, while guitar parts refuse to stray from single notes. The result is open-ended music, scattered, almost jazzy in structure, as on the track ‘Bees’. ‘Shadows’ and the already classic ‘Undertow’ are determined explorations of texture and nuance. Vocal expression is as flattened as the guitars are modulated by chorus and echo, in a careful juxtaposition of intimacy and distance. It gives the impression that you’re in the thick of it, but outside of it completely. As they sing, ‘…all that time it took to get yourself straight, it’s too late…’ it encapsulates the feeling of missing your opportunity, or missing your lover. And Warpaint songs unfold slowly; if these songs are long-distance car journeys then Warpaint are patient drivers content to take the back roads – content to live with this ennui, and some uncomfortable truths. JT

‘Swanlights’ is probably Antony’s richest work to date – expertly managing  to submerge his obvious song-writing talents into a thickly textured and forever changing palette of sound. The piano is, as expected, the guiding beacon once more, yet it is like a chameleon – adjusting its appearance to suit the constant cycle of beauty, tempo and experimentation. ‘Everything is New’ starts in familiar territory, Hegarty’s voice tied closely to the piano’s keys. But it soon levitates upwards for the mid- section (strings, cymbals and overlapping notes) and a second half of grandiose vocals and slowed reflection. The acoustic led ballad that is ‘The Great White Ocean’ is a much more fragile piece, while ‘Ghost’ verges on a classically trained composition – surging strings lead harmonised and restrained vocals, constantly switching between various speeds and arpeggio keys.

It is the records restlessness that creates such a depth and constant interest, the refusal to tow the line in structure makes for a more varied outing. Take the title track’s reverberating, drone like dirge – delayed sounds and reversing effects swirl around the singer’s voice; it slowly climbs to its feet with heavy and intent chords and a steady beat. One of the stand-out moments has to be the heart wrenching ‘The Spirit was Gone’, a ghostly set of silence and piano soundtrack the spiritually yearning words. Bjork makes an appearance on ‘Flétta’, another sparse landscape successfully transferred to tape.

Antony and the Johnsons’ music will always split opinion, his voice and unbridled emotion a little overwhelming for some. But ‘Swanlights’ is a multi-layered and interesting set that most will admire if nothing else. Think of it as a set of love songs twisted by classical arrangements, bleeding hearts, and one of the most unique singers performing today. HG