Antony and the Johnsons

Dust and Water

by Brian Howard

Antony and the Johnsons "Dust and Water"

Filter out the next-level intrigue that swirls around Antony and the Johnsons — the cabaret torch songs about gender identity delivered in a voice that's at once muscular and angelic, the band name that's an innuendo, the uncomfortable uncertainty about what "Fistful of Love" is about. Even stripped of context, there's that voice. Hegarty's pipes, a curiosity and a treasure, can be initially off-putting, doing to the diatonic scale what a funhouse mirror does to light. "Dust and Water," the penultimate track on A&tJs new The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian), distills Hegarty's voice to its essence. While the a cappella track has lyrics, Hegarty delivers them as sounds, rendering the song as an ersatz African tribal spiritual; imagine Ladysmith Black Mambazo serenading the Kalahari as Antony bellows "duhst and wuhter, wuhter and duhst" over a droning harmonic backing track. It's the sort of track you can listen to 100 times purely in appreciation of its beauty, and another 100 analyzing the heavenly mechanism behind it, all without growing weary of it.

Antony and the Johnsons play Mon., Feb. 2, 7 p.m., $25-$29.50, Keswick Theatre, 291 Keswick Ave., Glenside, 215-572-7650, keswicktheatre.com.