High-Flying Bird :Antonys luminous new album

SignOnSanDiego.com – George Varga

Few singers anywhere sound as haunting — or as haunted — as Antony Hegarty, the brawny-looking, transsexual Irish-American maverick with a wonderfully androgynous voice and a tremulous chamber-pop style all his own.

An outsider who proudly embraces his sense of “otherness,” Antony achieved international acclaim with his second album, 2005’s “I Am a Bird Now.” It featured a series of poignant torch ballads and what were once quaintly called art songs, each impeccably crafted and each infused with a dark, shimmering beauty that made them sound like the work of someone who came from another time and place.