Three years ago Antony and the Johnsons debuted at The Pabst Theater, bathed in bright, colorful backdrops and the powerful ballads from the Mercury Prize-winning disc "I Am a Bird Now."
Friday night, the band returned with new, subdued hues, perhaps inspired by its more somber sounding new album title, "The Crying Light."
But through a somewhat dismal glow, singer Antony Hegarty created his own auroral light, one strong enough to illuminate the entirety of the hushed full house before him.
Hegarty is an interesting and animated character to watch. His childlike mannerisms cast him as deeply innocent, yet his poetry plays out as wise beyond his 37 years. He appears all at once happy and sorrowful, despairing and hopeful.
Carried by his mighty vibrato, he seems otherworldly -- angelic almost. But then he tells a whimsical story about whistling at cops as a young boy and you realize he is in fact a human. An extraordinary talented human.
"So how's kicks?" he asks, as he and his grand piano launch into "For Today I Am a Boy," a first-album favorite that explores transgender life. And when his six-piece band comes in, it's hard not to get goosebumps.
While "I Am a Bird Now" touched heavily on those types of gender identity themes and was characterized by the famous photograph of transvestite performer Candy Darling on her deathbed on the cover, "The Crying Light" takes a step in a different, slightly darker direction. Death is prevalent, but not in a morose way -- more so as introspection, as demonstrated by his plea to find peace before leaving the earth in "Another World."
That is one of the many beauties of this band. It takes on profoundly complex subjects but performs them with a graceful simplicity that helps us all understand what a cruel yet sublime world we live in. And Hegarty sings it all with his signature, dimpled smile. He seems taken with his own music, completely swept up in its form, as if every song is new each time he plays it.
After an hour of brilliant new material -- the lovely "Epilepsy is Dancing," the stomp-rocker "Shake That Devil" -- Hegarty and his sextet encored with two "classics:" "Cripple and the Starfish" and "Hope There's Someone."
He always leaves his audience in awe.
OnMilwaukee.com staff writer Julie Lawrence grew up in Wauwatosa and has lived her whole life in the Milwaukee area.
As any “word nerd” can attest, you never know when inspiration will strike, so from a very early age Julie has rarely been seen sans pen and little notebook. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee it seemed only natural that she major in journalism. When OnMilwaukee.com offered her an avenue to combine her writing and the city she knows and loves in late 2004, she knew it was meant to be. Around the office, she answers to a plethora of nicknames, including “Lar,” (short for “Larry,” which is short for “Lawrence”) as well as the mysteriously-sourced “Bill Murray.”
