“This, my excavation, and today is Qumran,” the opening line to Bon Iver’s ‘Re: Stacks’, refers to the place in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, a discovery that changed the entire course of Christianity. Whilst some chose to ignore or accept the finding, for others, it completely destroyed their faith. It is used, in this case, as a metaphor for new beginnings – as Vernon puts it, “Everything that happens is from now on.”

The same revelation is expressed in the first five words on Antony and the Johnsons’ latest long player Swanlights‘: “I cried everything, everything is new.” By the end of the song, the stage is set. You’re back at zero. If your emotional understanding of the world could be contained within a building, Antony would be Tyler Durden, blowing it to the ground. The distinct sadness of Antony’s voice alone has had this disarming effect since he started winning hearts with his music ten years ago but it seems especially apt that he should start with a song like this on an album that contains some of his most simple lyricism yet. From this point, ‘Thank You for Your Love’ needs nothing more than for Antony to repeat the title twenty times in order to convey pure elation with stunning conviction. Similarly, it allows him to deconstruct the most complex of topics to heartbreaking effect, speaking of eternal life on ‘The Great White Ocean’ as an “ocean of death”: “We must try to find a way that we can see each other’s faces in the sea.”

On ‘Salt Silver Oxygen’, he speaks of a deity who punished those who disrespected her, “Elect the salt mother / For she is a selective Christ.” The sacredness of nature might not be the most immediately affecting topic on Swanlights but it is on this track that the album’s fusion of chamber pop and minimalist musical themes is epitomised with heart-wrenching orchestral build-ups – if you are prone to bawling, this is your cue. Closer ‘Christina’s Farm’ harks back to the beginning, “Everything was new.” His use of the past tense might imply resignation, but the fact that we can return to track one surely suggests otherwise.