Anthony and the Johnsons, I am a bird.

OK, and another album one after the other. This is the first time (so far) in no skips no shuffles where I’ve run out specifically to buy an album just in time to listen to it. The New Year jet-lag I experienced back from Japan left me with a terribly virtuous sleeping regime, which meant early starts, cleaning and essay-writing, then off into town to wander around the shops. Anyway, I bought a clutch of CDs, and when I realised I was coming up to listening to the first Anthony and the Johnsons album, I needed the second one.

Dan bought this on recommendation from someone or something. And what a lovely and amazing album. More polished than the first, I think, and this is the one that seemed to get the band noticed everywhere…everyone I met that spring had heard of them, and they played in Bristol some December which we failed to get tickets for…

It’s beautiful, there’s nothing really more to say. All the songs are structured so perfectly. I can’t help but thinking that letting Boy George to duet with him in “You are my sister” was a bit of a mistake, although it does highlight how gorgeous his own voice is when he comes back in. Rufus Wainwright, on the next song is probably a more equal match for his voice (Rufus Wainwright got around a bit didn’t he? He duetted with David Byrne on Grown Backwards, and as I’m sure I’ll mention again, even though his and Byrne’s voices were mismatched, it worked well in that duet…David’ Byrne’s singing too high and straining for the notes but it sounds great, while Wainwright pours his voice over the secondary line…)

I’m not writing much about this album. It reminds me of John Street and driving in Wales. It reminds me of green and blue in the air together, of working on the Wasteland in one room, with this playing just outside my headphones in the next. It reminds me of wonder of new music discovered, of a tolerance from record shops I thought had long gone and I could only retain by dipping my hand into the past or the unfashionable. Of softness and elegance not mocked. Motown and Mozart sit on the same sill and the cars trickle past. Again, I am writing about poverty and redistribution discourses, and the Thatcher-led disintegration of moral responsibility to one another, the oroboros of zero-sum exchange systems and all I can do is sway and smile. I love this album and I welcome it back into my possession.