"I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner

Before this song, all I knew about Antony was Hercules and Love Affair’s retro-disco “Blind” from last year and some ugly pretentious or pretentiously ugly, I’m not sure which, record covers. This, nonetheless, is the best Dylan song put out in ‘09. Purists might have trouble with Antony’s celestial falsetto but if you liked Bowie’s “Song For Bob Dylan” or any Iron & Wine song or ever lost something you loved, you’ll be right at home here. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” croons Antony in his trembling falsetto, making a traditional song sound as indelibly pop as the Cowboy Junkies doing “Sweet Jane.” There’s this old canard that songs are somehow more subjective than albums. I disagree but this song makes me wonder. “I never wrote a letter to my home” and “baby sister gone all wrong” and “can’t go home this way” and “when I pay the debt I owe to the commissary store then I’ll pawn my watch and chain and I’ll go home.” It’s not the story of my life— in this economy, I’m relatively debt free and get to see my parents— but it does intersect with it enough that it makes me want to cry. I found it on Dark Was The Night, a good way to hear some of the best of the progressive freaky folk rock sounds of contemporary indieland. If I sound too sarcastic for you let me try to put my finger on my general ambivalence about the Grizzly Bears and Animal Collectives (it's a veritable zoo) by saying simply: too much Peter Gabriel! Not here, though. And if you find Antony's face-painting foppishness too subjective he’s got a rejoinder already readymade: “If you missed the train I’m on/count the days that I’m gone/you can here the whistle blow 100 miles.” Let’s hear it for the boy.