The Wake

I am not qualified to review this album. This becomes clear almost immediately as I begin listening to it. It simply is not made for me. I know how to listen to death metal, I know how to listen to rock and roll, I know how to listen to hip-hop and I know how to listen to post-rock, but while I listen to Antony and the Johnsons it makes me tense how vocal-centric the whole thing is. I think, “Where is the drumbeat? When are the instrumentals going to do something interesting? Where is the rhythm?” Which if that kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable while listening to this record, clearly you don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Because it’s all about Antony’s voice.

Which brings me to the next reason why I probably shouldn’t be reviewing this: I fucking hate Antony’s voice. I hate the tone and tenor of it, I hate its smoothness and how he always sounds a little too low, how his voice is always arcing down even when ascending a scale. And I really really fucking hate how he over-vibratoes everything. I’ve hated his voice since the first time I heard it on a Current 93 album (which to be honest, the only Current 93 song I like is the one by Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy).

And not only that, but I hate his lyrics, how everything is kissing everything else while inanimate objects cry.

To a certain extent, I buy into the idea that good art stems from an understanding of the listener’s expectations. What a good artist does is satisfy or defy those expectations, generally a bit of both, and to do either he must understand them. Being a good critic, then, requires understanding of those expectations as well, because otherwise you can’t tell if the artist has done a good job, you can’t even really tell what he’s doing at all. And that’s the position I’m in: the bitching above is not informed criticism of a sub-par work of art, it’s a manifestation of the uncomfortability and frustration brought on by my engagement with an object of art that is outside the realm of my knowledge.

But people who get this sort of music seem to be going pretty nuts about this album, so if you’re into mellow and somber melodic vocalizings, maybe give it a spin. Me, I’ll stick to music that’s about guitar and beats.