Friday 31 October 2008


Last night, I went to the most phenomenal concert. I went to see Antony and the Johnsons at the Barbican Centre. Antony was performing with the London Symphony Orchestra and it was without a doubt one of the best events I have ever been to (and that's saying something). Allow me to wax lyrical for a moment. Antony's music is hard to describe. He has one of the most unusual, beautiful and arresting voices I have ever heard. He is 37, yet dresses and looks like a middle-aged woman - all diaphanous silks and draping fabrics. His songs are unashamedly poetic and free from cynicism, and he spends much of his time singing about love, the tragedies of life or dead people (his best songs include all three). Now, I know. You're thinking - dearest, that doesn't sound very cool. A man who dresses as if he shops at Hampstead Bazaar, singing about clichés, supported by an orchestra? Doesn't sound like the usual Sex Pistols and new indie bands soundtrack to your life...

But there was something which glued me to it, somehow. He stood there and sang about dead boys and starfish and rivers of sorrow and the violins swooped and I felt like the bottom had dropped out of the world for a while.

And today, for the first time ever (and I've been to hundreds of concerts in my time and consider myself a bona fide cynic generally) I have been unable to get this concert out of my mind. It feels a bit like when you've been out for your third date with someone and suddenly you've realised that you're falling love; you have mentionitis, you think of that person all the time, you start daydreaming all over the place. So - I've (horrific cliché alert!) officially fallen in love with an event which can never be repeated.

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