Antony & The Johnsons — “Dust And Water” — The Crying Light
I can tell you exactly why I waited this long to write about The Crying Light: Antony Hegarty—master of the left-field lullaby—has always left enough room for interpretation to make anyone agoraphobic. ”Dust And Water,” in its evocation of a desert drinking pool and flirtation with the Middle Eastern harmonic minor, might have been a straight landscape painting were it not for the sinew of Julia Kent’s cello and a glassy Gregorian drone seeping below Hegarty’s featherweight trills. The question of whether this cultural blurring is deliberate feels worthy of academic logorrhea, which is exactly what would spoil a fantasia heart-stopping in its purity. So you can see the bind I’m in.
