Album Review: Antony And The Johnsons - Cut The World

Recorded live with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra, Cut The World showcases tracks from Antony And The Johnsons' four studio albums, a greatest hits record in the grandiose style that Antony Hegarty's beautifully sorrowful and dynamic vocal deserves.

Opening with the only new track, a piece written for the theatre production The Life and Death of Marina Abramović that uses the orchestra to build to a pleasingly tumultuous conclusion, old and new fans alike prepare for a powerful journey. And what comes next is, surprisingly, an almost eight-minute speech titled Future Feminism which opens with the sentence: “I've been thinking all day about the moon – like, is it an accident that women menstruate once a month and that the moon comes once a month?” Hegarty's thoughts on religion, world order and feminine systems of governance are intriguing, though the timing is questionable.

Epilepsy Is Dancing trades some of its chamber pop edge for a clearer, more structural sound, allowing room to hear both an astonishing level of isolation and playfulness within the one intake of Hegarty's breath. There's little love lost for George Michael's guest spot on 2005's You Are My Sister – here it shines as a solo amongst a bed of sweeping strings and flute embellishments. Cripple And The Starfish is plainly haunting: “It's true I always wanted love to be filled with pain and bruises”. Hegarty's poetic lyricism is more poignant in an orchestral context across Cut The World, his love more raw, his pain more twisted; it's easier for the lyrical gems to find their way into the psyche of a listener willing to mull. It's a beautifully accomplished experience.