Antony hegarty gay
Antony and the Johnsons singer Antony/Anohni Hegarty has spoken out against an alleged meeting between Pope Francis, head of the Catholic church, and the conservative Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who has refused to give same-sex marriage licences on religious grounds, with the Pontiff even rumoured to have venerated her for her courage.
“Apparently Pope Francis was productive behind the scenes to undermine gay rights in America,” Hegarty wrote last night on the band’s Facebook page, “How shameful and pathetic of him. I have been so impressed with his approach to climate and his call to end the death penalty in the US. But for him to make insidious comments about how the ‘traditional family’ is under threat (presumably from gay marriage) and then to secretly meet that poor misguided cretin Kim Davis…”.
“Francis shots to distract us from Catholic sexual predators with a smokescreen of artificial moralising about gay people and their rights to live as equals in society,” Hegarty writes, suggesting that the Pope “should line up one hundred gay, lesbian and transgendered people from around the world and wash and kiss their fee
The broken-hearted people living in the world agree: Antony And The Johnsons own become a profound voice of hope and sorrow. A story of superhuman tragedy, avant-garde androgyny and plenty of soul. By Matthew Fritch
It’s the grayest New York day I can remember. The weather doesn’t even deliver a heavy downpour or a single rumble of thunder; there’s just a brightness, no-umbrella mist and a low-lying fog that covers everything above the fifth floor of the buildings along Sixth Avenue. It’s Sunday. Somewhere, the Giants and Jets are losing football games. In Penn Station, soldiers stand around in camouflage fatigues with their M-16 rifles at chest level, their muzzles pointed straight at the ground. Bored-sounding announcements are issued to passengers over the station’s PA system: Do not leave your luggage unattended. Promptly notify suspicious activity. In terror-alert parlance, perhaps it’s the most yellowish-orange New York day I can remember.
Antony Hegarty and I can’t even think of anything to do. After a quiet brunch, we vibrate off some of the lethargy and finally settle on a real arrange of action: We’re going shopping for socks. Or maybe we’ll go to the pet store and stare at
Not Intimidated: Antony Hegarty Interviewed
2012 is shaping up to be a massive year for Antony Hegarty, who first shot to prominence through the success of his second album (with his band, The Johnsons), I Am A Avian Now, which won the Mercury Prize. In August, he will be curating London’s prestigious Meltdown Festival on the South Bank, bringing together artists such as Diamanda Galas, Lou Reed and William Basinski. He’s also about to release a dwell album, Cut The World, and has worked recently with Marina Abramovic on her much-lauded Robert Wilson production The Life And Death Of Marina Abramovic.
After several years of touring with an orchestra, and with four Antony & The Johnsons albums behind him (not to mention collaborations with Hercules And Love Affair and Cocorosie), Hegarty shows no sign of slowing down, and The Quietus was delighted to hold the chance to sit down with him at London’s Bloomsbury Hotel to discuss Meltdown, his upcoming album and his views on modern society.
You are curating the Meltdown Festival this year. How did that come about, and were you daunted by the prospect?
Antony Hegarty: It’s simply that they called me and I was interested.
Published in:September-October 2016 issue.
Hopelessness
by Anohni
Secretly Canadian Records
THE Designer formerly known as Antony Hegarty, best-known as the vocalist behind Antony and the Johnsons, now goes by the name Anohni. Earlier this year, the English-born singer told The New York Times that the new appellation was a return to her “spirit name,” which she has used among friends for years. The metamorphosis appears complete, for now.
Heretofore, Hegarty was notable in the indie-rock realm as an eccentric singer with a haunting and hard-to-define kind of musicality. Her group’s 2005 album I Am a Bird Now was the band’s biggest success, aided by guest vocals from Boy George, Björk, and the overdue Lou Reed. Prior to Antony’s transformation into Anohni, she was hardly a stranger to provocation. Songs like “Hitler in My Heart” and “Epilepsy is Dancing,” from her years with the Johnsons, were powered by astounding vocals but lacking in melody. You are not a real music critic until you have taken at stab at describing Anohni’s perfectly calibrated voice and vibrato. The breathy sibilance belies a traditionally masculine sound; the result is angelic in its androgyny
Antony Sees the Swanlight
ANTONY HEGARTY. PHOTO COURTESY OF DON FELIX CERVANTES/SECRETLY CANADIAN.
The presence of Antony Hegarty, the creative strength behind Antony and the Johnsons, is something otherwordly. How else to illustrate his remarkable and self-possessed grace, fluid and complex partnership with gender, and of course, that voice? Gentle and low, his speaking voice nearly fools the listener—that heart-aching warble that couldn’t possibly come from the present polite, soft-spoken individual… With the release of October’s Swanlights EP—which is, in many ways, a companion piece to 2009’s The Crying Light—the duality of Hegarty is front and center. The Crying Light features hauntingly dark songs prefer “Another World,” with Hegarty lamenting, “I need another place/Where there be peace/I need another world/This one’s nearly gone.” By comparison, Swanlight starts decidedly more celebratorily, with Hegarty confessing against a soft piano, “Everything is new.”
“The last album took musical inspiration from how I felt when I looked out onto the world. It was more rigorous emoti