Plumage Kicks

Chamber song crooner par excellence Antony Hegarty is back with a typically beguiling album, Swanlights, which will also be accompanied by a 144-page art book – also called Swanlights – produced by the singer. Combining painting, photography, collages and writing, the creation of the book very much informed the feel of the album, according to Hegarty.

“There’s a kind of storybook vibe to the record,” he considers, speaking down the line from New York. “There’s a panoramic aspect where, hopefully, you feel like the tale is carrying you along. I took a trip above the Arctic Circle a while back and that also fed into the lyrics and music – the atmosphere is quite crystalline.”
The lyrics on Antony’s previous album, The Crying Lights, were significantly influenced by his views on the environment. To what does he attribute his eco-awareness?
“Well, when I was at college in New York in the late ’80s, it was hard to avoid,” he reflects. “That was the time when the damage to the ozone layer was first becoming a big issue, and it was difficult not to be aware of it. It seemed – and still seems – like a pretty straight-forward issue to me: not completely destroying the environment in the pursuit of short-term profit would appear to be a bit of a no-brainer.”
Whilst Swanlights is another stellar collection of piano-led, dark cabaret pieces, Antony made a highly interesting stylistic departure in his collaborations with the gifted NYC producer Andy Butler, whose outfit Hercules And Love Affair produced one of the finest records of 2008 in the shape of their self-titled debut. Hegarty’s singing merged wonderfully with Butler’s uptempo disco grooves, and I wonder if the singer has ever considered venturing into that territory on his own albums?
“The thing is, growing up in the early ’80s, you were inundated with electronic music,” recalls Antony. “That’s fine, and there were certainly some classic singles released during that time, but when it started getting in the territory of these awful, generic synth-pop tunes, it was just like, ’I’ve had enough of electronic music!’ So I went in a different direction and piano became my instrument.
“I mean, I take each project as it comes, but in my formative years as a musician and singer I was very taken with performers like Nina Simone and it became about writing songs with that ballad structure. That approach has stayed with me and left to my own devices I do tend to write these melancholy chamber pieces. Also, the Hercules record came out of a time when I was hanging out a lot in New York with Andy. We were having a lot of fun, so it just seemed natural that we would start making some music together.
“But that’s not to say that I wouldn’t make another electronic record – I’m working on a series of mixes with Matthew Herbert, and I’ve been playing around with a couple of producers on some other material. But I don’t know when any of that is going to be released.”
Antony’s remarkably expressive and emotional singing style – which so captivated audiences on his marvellous 2005 debut I Am A Bird Now – has famously won him a legion of high-profile admirers, among them Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull and US uber-producer Hal Wilner. Another fan is Yoko Ono, with whom Antony performed – in accompaniment to the Plastic Ono Band – at Ornette Coleman’s Meltdown at the Royal Festival Hall.
“Yeah, they invited me along to that show,” says Antony. “Sean Lennon was also there. I’m a big Yoko Ono fan – I’m a huge believer in what she’s done and what she continues to do, so it was really an honour. She’s so brave, you know? I love her music, and I especially love the way she’s been a consistent and clear voice as a feminist, and as someone talking about issues of gender and governance. It’s funny, I was never into The Beatles as much as I was into John Lennon – I would always have played his solo records more than any Beatles albums.”
One appearance which was key in bringing Antony to a wider audience was his slot in the superb documentary Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, where he performed a fine version of ‘If It Be Your Will’. How did he end up participating in the film?
“The recording of the live portion of that film was kind of an after-thought that was thrust upon us,” he remembers. “Hal Wilner had produced an event in the Sydney Opera House celebrating the songs of Leonard Cohen, and at the last minute, this lady [director Lian Lunson] came in and asked if she could film it – and that’s what came of it. The documentary is obviously about Leonard Cohen’s life and career, and then you have the different performers doing his songs slotted in there. But the film had a reach that none of us could have imagined.
“In fact I think that on the internet, that track is the most listened to of anything I’ve done; it’s had something like two million hits. The two most popular songs of mine online are that and the Hercules song ‘Blind’, which should give me a clue as to what people want me to do. (Laughs uproariously) But fat chance I’m gonna do it!”
One of the stand-out tracks on Swanlights is the delicate ‘Fletta’, a duet with Bjork. How did Antony hook up with the Icelandic singer?
“We did a series of sessions together in 2007, when we first met,” he explains. “We were looking to do something for her record Volta, but we did a lot of other material too and this was one of the songs we worked on. We recorded it in Jamaica – I bought along this piano track and asked Bjork to improvise over the top, and then I traced my vocal against what she had done. It was a bit of a work-in-progress, but it almost silently set itself, and when we went back to it, it had a kind of integrity, and in a way seemed like a little photograph of our developing relationship.
“I just felt it fitted so well on this record because there’s a kind of patience that Bjork embodies, in my life at least. She has this serene and mysterious quality that’s very enticing. ‘Fateful’ is the wrong word, but she has a sort of belief that things are going to be alright. Getting the right tone can be a tricky thing when you’re making an album and that song provided a particular flavour that was important.
“Bjork is a kind of a clarion of hope, and I felt this record really needed a bit of that – because at times it’s a bit of a collision between joyfulness and hopelessness. And, you know, you don’t want to lose track and end up leaning too heavily towards the latter. For me, in the context of the album, Bjork’s voice represents a sort of stepping back and sitting with things, like sitting with a night sky or something. Just a reminder of the value of patience, and of being aware that things can always take a turn for the better.”

Swanlights is out now on Rough Trade.