Antony has a tear-strained voice that will forever overwhelm anything the rest of his ensemble may do. That’s the nature of vocal-driven music. Even the minor instrumental patters here and there on The Crying Light never actually go beyond setting the stage for the next reappearance of his pained, absurdist melodrama.
Some might complain this is smoother and far more poppy than I Am A Bird Now, but isn’t that the point of personality-driven cabaret music? It’s about setting the scene for a voice and for words, so people can make their own private movies in their heads and be subsumed by that collaborative narrative.
I hope one day they’re really huge, like Leonard Cohen huge. Mr. Cohen is a neat vocalist (with terrible taste in arrangements) but $250 tickets is absolutely absurd. That kind of absurd success would be a tidy ironic fit for this increasingly pop, gender-falutin’ post-cabaret conspiracy.
here there be rodents 
Yeah, I think those little shouts on Aeon are the most beautiful part of the album, cause they finally offer a break from that rather relentless prettiness, 3/4 of the way through the album.
it’s by far the most “poppy” thing they’ve done, but some of that is polish. it feels a lot more like an album from a band rather than an album from antony singing and some other people who showed up in a studio to play.