You Are My Sister

Antony & The Johnsons breakthrough album I Am A Bird Now has certainly touched fans and critics alike. Her second full-length – released in February – stands as one of the most globally acclaimed albums of 2005. The album’s latest single is the anthemic and heart-rending “You Are My Sister”, presented as a duet between Anohni and Boy George. Together these two vocalists climb to the highest peak of emotional vulnerability, providing for the listener one of the most touching and uncanny duets of the past decade. It’s heartbreaking when Anohni sings, “You are my sister / we were born / so innocent, so full of need / there were times we were friends / but times I was so cruel / at night I’d asked for to watch me as I sleep”. With soaring and world-weary intensity, Boy George utterly commands the refrain: “You are my sister / and I love you / may all of your dreams come true.” In “You Are My Sister,” the pair sing from the depths of their hearts for the world.

This extended single also includes three new, unreleased songs recorded during the I Am A Bird Now sessions. “Poorest Ear” is a harrowing and complex vision from the perspective of an alienated child. Responding perhaps to “You Are My Sister,” Anohni sings of a girl who wishes to save her imperiled brother in “Forest of Love.” Finally, “Paddy’s Gone” is a choral lament to long-lost man. These tracks all seem to support Anohni’s recent assertion; “Recently I have been imagining that we contain a family inside us… a mother, a father, a boy, a girl and a baby. I Am a Bird Now represents a dialogue between some of these figures.”

The esteemed NPR program All Things Considered recently reviewed I Am A Bird Now injecting one of the most illuminate and apropos assessments yet, “This is a fantastic record. It’s thoroughly modern but feels lived in, it’s got an old soul…”