Deontological moral frameworks and why you should get out of bed in the morning

As it turns out, one's second year of university is tougher than one's first year. Part of me hadn't anticipated this.

I've been more than a little despondent of late. No single album has grabbed my attention in the same way Danielson and Beirut and so on have managed to in months past, and it's not been for lack of new material coming my way. Clue To Kalo's One Way It's Every Way is an ethereal, jangly little album with lots of pretty sounds. Think Sufjan Stevens fronting the Books with the express purpose of crafting easy-going pop songs. Lovely as they are, the songs have precious little meat on them. Not a lot to write home about, not something I can really sink my teeth into as an imitation imitation critic, you see.

I guess I could gush about Antony and the Johnsons, couldn't I?

I first stumbled onto Mister Antony about a year ago. I remember still being up to my eyeballs in generic rock and roll and punk bands, though I really had made significant progress since high school. The very first chord of Hope There's Someone felt, and I sincerely mean this, like a goddamn breath of fresh air. About all I'd heard about him prior to his sophomore album, I Am A Bird Now, was that he is A) Mind numbingly beautiful and B) Warbly as all get out.

And that was pretty well accurate.

The album is stunning from start to finish. Heart-breakingly honest and absolutely gorgeous. Antony needs little more than a piano and his own, yes it is warbly, voice to carry this album. His song craft is spotless, so much so that trying to quote him out of context invariably sounds ridiculous. He exemplifies, among so many of his excellences, that lyrical work gains its power much more from its delivery than its content. Again, fuck you Decemberists.

Songs run a relatively limited gamut, but in such a way that I Am A Bird Now emits a cohesive, beautifully film noir atmosphere. Like a cozy little restaurant in winter, or a hillside drowned in that sound of rain that everyone thinks of when they think of rain. The sensitive swing of Fistful of Love pops and swaggers ever so slightly, swelling with a perfect little brass section. Hope There's Someone is gothic balladry without the goth, easily the song best encapsulating Antony's gentle, sweeping style. The monumentally powerful outro, with pounding grand piano engulfed in an veritable typhoon of overdubbed wailing, is knock-you-flat-on-your-ass magnificent, and still puts me on pins and needles. Spiralling and Bird Gerhl head down a similar path, but with fantastically different effect. Both can and will break your heart with its plaintive, ineffable honesty and gloriously uncomplicated instrumentation.  The latter showed up toward the end of V for Vendetta, and I may have wept.

There's not much else to explain, really, and the album doesn't need anything more. Uniformly stark and mournful, simultaneously triumphant and vibrant, and all tied together by that indescribable golden voice.

That I Am A Bird Now ensconced itself into the pantheon of my favourite albums so quickly is a testament to its beauty, and fuels my continuing bafflement in how divisive the album is. People hate this music. Not just dislike it, hate it. They ridicule it as childish and stupid, and miss its point entirely.

Now, I try to reign in my opinions on other people as much as possible. I do maintain a strict doctrine of some-things-are-art-and-some-are-entertainment-only, but I can observe a modicum of niceness. But some things get to me, and none more so than a story Jams related to me concerning some residence floor mates. Being connected via hub, and being nosey, she discovered that one had, amongst many many pop standards and mass-produced hip-hoppers, I Am A Bird Now.

That's feckin' weird, innit?

Turns out that the gal in question kept it around specifically to play for her friends and deride as being absolutely ridiculous and awful.  Apparently they'd get a good laugh out of the stupid transsexual man playing at making music.

That fucking burns me, it really sincerely does. Not liking something is one thing, and more power to you if you can respect it without enjoying the music, but that girl's reaction to Antony was tantamount to dragging him into the street, stripping him naked, and spitting on him with a grin on her goddamn face.

I'm oversensitive in matters of antagonism like this, but you get what I'm saying.

Kant, Hobbes, and Morgenthau are running together in a manner much like knowledge. I fear I may be learning.