With an extraordinary voice that earned comparisons with the great blues/jazz
diva Nina Simone, fragile piano arrangements and some highly unusual subject
matter, Antony Hegarty crashed into the mainstream with his gorgeous, if
slightly unsettling second album I Am A Bird Now in 2005 - a shock winner of the
Mercury Music Prize. Born in England but mostly raised in America, Hegarty
studied experimental theatre in New York and founded Blacklips, a collective of
radical performers with a residency at East Village's Pyramid Club. He then
decided to concentrate on music, releasing his...