written by Chris Familton

Cast aside short-lived hype and blogosphere hyperbole and the wide world of music hasn’t thrown up many artists in the last decade that are quite as unique as Antony Hegarty. Round these parts I still bump into people who talk in awe of his Opera House appearance as part of the Leonard Cohen tribute and as a witness to said performance I can attest that it truly did feel like the arrival of a mysterious and captivating talent. On album number four, Hegarty has loosened the musical corset, pulled back the curtains and let some light into his darkly romantic world.

While The Crying Light had some stellar moments it never lived up to the mark set by its predecessor I Am A Bird Now – as much as many desperately wanted it to. It wasn’t a bad album but it lacked the emotional weight and tragic tenderness of his breakthrough release. Swanlights does much to rectify the balance and on opener Everything Is New he states his intentions with cascading classical piano and swelling strings gently wrestling for breath amid a jazz setting. It sounds like those fireworks that explode and send glittering showers of embers across the sky.

Are we in for some erstwhile prog chamber-pop album? Not quite, though there are elements of that scattered throughout. The Great White Ocean comforts our ears with a typical Hegarty vocal. ‘Sing with me my sister when I dive’ he pleads over an acoustic guitar. Guitar is something not usually associated with the pianist and it works wonderfully by adding a light melancholic airiness to the mood rather than the often associated doom and despair. The first single Thank You For Your Love is the album’s equivalent of Fistful Of Love from I Am A Bird Now. It is uncluttered with sonic detritus and focuses wonderfully with stately drumming and a gentle soul horn section. It is Antony-lite but delightfully so.

If Antony is letting that light in through the parted curtains then it is on Ghost where it first truly dawns. ‘Chase the river, chase the sunlight’ he sings over bright chords, twinkling piano notes and strings that lift the senses. Wisely he has avoided leaning too far in a positive direction and a perfect example of the balance he has achieved is the title track. It shimmers darkly on a droning, looped piece of tremolo guitar distortion with backward notes adding to the otherworldly feeling it conjures up. ‘Oh it’s such a mystery to me’ he sings and musically he nails the sentiment.

Elsewhere he gets baroque in a dramatic Sufjan Stevens way on Salt Silver Oxygen and then the re is the much talked about Fletta, a duet with Bjork who gives a typically emotional and unique performance. It isn’t the best song on the album but it does serve to open up Antony’s world with a fresh voice amid his own layered vocal arrangements that populate many of the songs.

Swanlights is more of a expansion or evolution of Hegarty’s songwriting than any kind of departure from the script as some have suggested. It feels like the touring of recent years has weakened the heavy art grip that Lower Manhattan had on his muse and allowed more of the natural world to seep into his words and the general texture of the album. For that we should be grateful as it shows an artist still on the arc of discovery.

this review first appeared on FasterLouder