Pitchfork

Since the ascent of Antony's I Am a Bird Now, critics have progressively focused their attention on the New York City vocalist's physicality, often with weirdly aggressive cheap shots. The hook: Big guy with angel's voice. Live, wearing a black Mascis wig as camouflage, Antony does tower over his bandmates, but the body police fail to note that his physiognomy renders the gender play so much more exquisitely plaintive because, well, there just aren't many women that tall. And despite his colorful backstory, it seems time to drop the two-bit caricatures and puff pieces and return to the brilliant, unearthly voice that earned Antony his accolades in the first place-- his three most recent singles offer a good place as any to instigate a frequency shift.

Functioning as Antony 101, The Lake was released three months prior to I Am a Bird Now. Offering a glimpse of things to come, the cover image is a detail from Peter Hujar's 1974 photograph "Candy Darling on Her Deathbed II". Musically, it opens with a studio version of the title track, Antony's Edgar Allen Poe jam. The song appeared in a live version on Golden Apples of the Sun and was initially found on the Current 93/Antony 2003 split Live at St. Olave's Church EP. "The Lake"'s studio version, however, features Kevin Barker of Currituck Co. on guitar and Antony regular Julia Kent playing cello. Compared to the earlier configuration, it's crisper and a tad slower with more pronounced instrumentation-- especially Barker's crystalline chords.

Next comes "A Fistful of Love", a jazzy, horn-heavy stomp beginning with a spoken intro courtesy of Lou Reed. This paean to rough sex/love nicely prolongs Poe: "The Lake" is an adaptation of an Edgar Allen poem and Antony sings on Reed's The Raven, a concept album about the soused 19th-century author. The EP closes with "The Horror Has Gone", a lilting ballad that finds Antony in full vocal tremolo. Kent's cello again rallies the beauty around Antony's piano, drums and what sound like female backing vocals (though I was assured by label folk that's it's actually Antony layering himself into tizzies). The lyrics inject some hope-- "I found my baby/ I lost my bird and I know it seems crazy/ But now I feel we were one"-- but Antony's exquisite performance-- and the macabre final flourish, in particular-- tempers the cheer.

Keeping his aesthetic thematically tight, the Hope There's Someone EP opens with the title track, a piece about the fear of dying alone, among other things. (The death rattle is supplemented with a bed-ridden video directed by Glen Fogel and starring Joey Gabriel. A still from the video is used as the cover art, connecting it to Candy Darling.) The other two tracks are previously unreleased recordings from the I Am a Bird Now sessions. The strongest of these-- and one of Antony's best-- is "Frankenstein", a full-on love song complete with gothy gospel-esque choir. The most stirring moment occurs when Antony goes a bit Aretha-- "When I was a young boy, my mama said you better watch out for your fall, but now that I'm a grown woman/ I know I know I know"-- accompanied by rollicking, beautifully recorded drums. The finale, "Just One Star", feels like a minute-and-a-half clipped from some Broadway musical, Antony crooning along to his ivories: "I am just one star, born of grace and soon to die, but if i can just learn how to love then I could live." Continuing to find bridges between each single, the last few notes echo a moment from "The Lake"'s piano line.

The recently released third EP pairs "You Are My Sister", a moving duet with Boy George, with three more unreleased songs recorded during the Bird sessions. "Poorest Ear" fits and starts, but never flows, ending with "Little Drummer Boy" snare and Antony's approximated Riverdance. Fortunately, "Forest of Love" is more successful. Sung from the perspective of a five year-old girl, the narrative follows her requests for the return of her brother from all sorts of possible evils. It begins gorgeously, but lacking Antony's usual effortless magic it plods into vaguely new age territory: Its saving grace is the description of the landscape, teeming with water snakes and trees. Both "Forest of Love" and "Poorest Ear" rely too much on Antony's voice and not enough on solid songwriting.

Missteps are forgiven, however, upon hearing the excellent final track, "Paddy's Gone". Stripping accouterments for spare piano and multi-tracked voice, Antony presents a heartbreaking three minutes of ecstatic barbershop quartet; he careens within himself variously ("Paddy's gone for a long time/ Love that man/ Scared without him"), and like the dusky vocal variations of Elliott Smith's "I Didn't Understand", it could loop for an hour and still hold my interest.

Since I reviewed I Am a Bird Now last February, the album's grown even more astounding to my ears. In that sense, it's legitimately intriguing to yawn through some of these non-album stinkers. But hell, Antony's human-- I was starting to think of him as some kind of perfect, enraptured Downtown deity.