Emily A. Benton

photograph by Andrew Thomas Lee, courtesy of PasteMagazine.com

As mentioned before, I got Scott tickets for his birthday to go see Antony and the Johnsons in Atlanta on the band’s first studio album tour in three years. Or you could say that I got myself tickets and disguised it as a birthday present for him. I’ll let you decide.

Neither of us had seen Antony perform live before, but I knew if our combined reactions to seeing his performances on DVD in concert films such as I’m Your Man (a Leonard Cohen tribute) were any indication, it would be worth every penny.

Atlanta’s Variety Playhouse was the closest venue to Charlotte to see Antony and his band on tour. I hadn’t been to Atlanta since I was 17 and shopping for prom dresses, so I had no idea what to expect about Little Five Points or the Variety or the people we would see there. I have a lot to say about our little weekend in Atlanta, and hopefully time will allow me to do that later, but for now I’ll concentrate on the Variety and the show that we saw there.

If I could create the perfect venue to see Antony perform in, it probably would be lavish and velvet and somehow resemble a David Lynch dream sequence. The Variety Playhouse was not that, but it was probably the best venue we could have seen him without all the imagined adornments. The space was medium-small and included auditorium seating. I don’t know the history, but I’m guessing the Variety is a renovated old film theater. Maybe they still show films there. But the point is – the sound was great, and the space was not too big, not too small. There was no leaning involved. From our seats near the middle, we could see everything. And everything was good.

I had listened to only one track from Antony’s new release, The Crying Light, prior to attending this performance. That was a little on purpose, because my best live concert experiences have been when I was hearing a good portion of an artist’s work for the first time. It makes the memory stick more, and I think I become a better listener when I’m not comparing the live version to the recorded version as it’s playing out before me. This case was no different – I think I made the right choice to wait. Antony’s songs, especially the new ones, were breathtaking live. Breathtaking. As in, when the song ended, I realized I needed air. I had been holding my breath. Or I had been breathing too soft or too hard and was off on oxygen flow somewhere between my heart and my brain.

I should say, if you have never listened to Antony, you may experience this first time you do. Or the first time you let go of your mental barriers to his voice or persona, and really listen to him as a solo artist with a backing band. (Although, his collaborations are also intriguing. See Bjork, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Heloise & the Savoir Faire, etc.) For those of us who’ve known his voice, magnify what you know of it by two. That’s seeing him live. Breathtaking.

The Crying Light songs share some themes from earlier work. They are songs of love and peace combined with the emotions from an outsider, someone in need of acceptance and escape. My favorite of his songs are those that are not about just romantic love but about social and family love (such as “You Are My Sister” from I Am A Bird). He’s beautifully reinterpreted that ugly duckling concept as it plays out in the child/sibling role, and it continues on The Crying Light (as with the title track). I’m sure everyone has their own interpretations, perhaps more political as there are songs that expand to the world’s acceptance/rejection, but I really like the smaller conflicts. I’m talking about my head. Let’s talk about the music.

 I’m still listening to the new album, but I’m pretty sure he played most of the songs on it, if not all. They were longer live, I believe. The woman next to me, who flew in with her husband from Maine, said something beforehand about how the group sounded more restrained on the new album than on previous releases (self-titled and I Am A Bird Now). I didn’t feel that live, at all. The only sign of restraint was that everyone remained in the same place on stage throughout the entire show. Antony was at his piano, stage right (our left). He was accompanied by six musicians (stage left), who absolutely lived up to his voice. I wasn’t sure what to expect of them. But at times, I felt as if we had come to the symphony, and we were there to see an opera singer perform with his sextet. You could tell some, if not all, of his band members were classically trained. He had a cellist (who I think was from Rasputina), a violinist, a drummer, a bassist, and a fiddler/guitar player/back-up vocalist and a guitarist/saxophonist/clarinet player. I appreciated them being there; they were not minimalist. The string arrangements were phenomenal. And they could really rock out with wind and guitar, as with the single “Shake That Devil” from last year’s EP, Another World. His band made him sound better without overpowering his voice. They did their job well; they lifted him up.

One of the highlights, and there were many, was when Antony covered a Beyonce song, “Crazy in Love.” He put her to shame. What more, his band kept this minor key, so the pop song was bittersweet. She’s really going crazy, you think. It was awesome.

Antony had great audience interaction, too. For someone who has the potential to become so diva, he’s really sweet and gracious. He thanked us for coming. He charmingly turned down offers to marry him from overly-enthusiastic male fans in the crowd. (”That’s OK, you don’t have to do that. There are enough taxi drivers in New York. I’m sure one of them will marry me.”) He talked about flowers. (His favorite are peonies, because they’re so common.) He confessed. (He always wanted to stalk Otis Redding, like Janis Joplin.) He said this was his first time playing in Atlanta, and when the audience begged and shouted names of where else he should play (naming off at least a half dozen states. OK, I admit – I yelled “North Carolina!”), he said “Wow. We would love to play all those places. Did you really all come from there?”

I wasn’t expecting an encore, but we got one after a standing ovation. Everyone screamed as they heard the start of “Cripple and Starfish” from his first album, one of his most popular songs. (And my memory is already getting hazy, but I want to say that he closed with “Fistful of Love,” but I could be wrong. I know they played that song, but I just can’t remember if it was the closing tune. I’ll confirm later.)

After the encore, we all stood again. They walked out and bowed, and Antony thanked us once more. Everyone spilled out of the theatre in a daze. The bathroom was quiet, although packed with those of us who held our bladder through the entire show. We said goodbye to our Maine neighbors on the street; I could tell it took them a second to register that we were the same people sitting next to them inside. Then we drove out of the parking lot, and passed a small crowd waiting at Antony’s bus, where a couple hours before, we had seen a vase full of lilies sitting in front of the window.

(More pictures from the Atlanta show found here. A Creative Loafing live review found here.)