Antony and the Johnsons

When Beyonce cavorts in heels and not much else offering up "baby you got me" it does nothing but vaguely offend my olfactory senses. I'm not one of these that appreciates her "head-rush blast of joy" crap, her music bores me and makes me run far away from any thoughts I had for "appreciating" the "pop sensibilities" or whatever that nonsense is.

It all changed last night when Antony Hegarty gave Crazy in Love blue ache, true beauty and somehow a rare candour unseen in music of all kinds. It was only the beginning of a startlingly beautiful performance from a man still far from comfortable in his own skin.

When some prick requested Frankenstein as Hegarty settled in to the Sydney Opera House's gorgeous Steinway grand it only gave the beautiful girl-man more to work with.
"Hmmm, yes, I've been called Frankenstein once before."
He owned a crowd that wanted only to serve, only to applaud. It felt almost greedy to call for an encore, as if somehow it would take too much from Hegarty and the 41 classicially trained musicians playing with him, for him, around him.

Hegarty reached back to a time before his fame to I fell in Love With a Dead Boy and its awkward lyrics of highs and lows set against sombre strings and audience hushed as much by shock as by context.

His rambling intermissions on Murdoch, climate change, art and travel endear him to a crowd of grand parents, uni students, young professionals and Opera House season ticket holders. Hope There's Someone is perhaps the most empathetic song ever written - it sits near Finn's Fall at Your Feet. Hegarty crawled inside the black mass of Steinway and hammered at the strings from in there, too frightened to come out but too frightened at the thought of not playing, off not getting rid of something quite ghastly.

Kiss My Name was perhaps a minor moment of homogeneity, it's easy enough when you're dealing with a voice so readily identifiable but less forgivable when there are 41 strings and drums and horns behind you to differentiate. But the criticism is intended to be ever so light, it mattered little on such a glorious night.

Missing were Her Eyes are Underneath the Ground and Epilepsy is Dancing, both wonderful and fragile and two of the strongest on The Crying Light. But again, it's hard to complain or work to find fault amidst so much magic, an unending stream of beauty.