BIRD ON A WIRE

"Hope there's someone who'll take care of me ... when I die," trills Antony Hegarty, of Antony and the Johnsons, on the breathtaking first track of the band's recent album, / Am a Bird Now. The voice is a near whisper, trembling but determined, emerging from the wreckage of New York's AIDS-ravaged avantgarde like a wildflower forcing itself through the permafrost. This crossdressing, six-foot-something, downtown performance vet has bewitched the likes of Lou Reed and Boy George. And last month, despite having lived in the U.S. since age 12, he surprisingly won the Mercury Prize for best British or Irish album. But on both sides of the pond, Antony's arrestingly spare heart-in-hand hymns of loss and transformation play like an all-too-fitting soundtrack to a very fragile age.

AARON GELL