Vinyl Record

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now

Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now on LP vinyl. A 2005 Pop record available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel, Ireland.

LP · 2005

Available from Kilmorna Collection in Listowel.

Buyer notes: 2005 LP, currently available from the Kilmorna Collection vinyl shelf. Pay for pickup in Listowel or ship within Ireland for EUR 5.50.

I Am a Bird Now is one of the defining chamber-pop records of the 2000s because it sounds both fragile and immovable. Released in 2005 by Antony and the Johnsons, the album places Anohni's voice at the centre of a world of piano, strings, quiet guest appearances and songs that treat identity, transformation and longing as sacred subjects rather than decorative themes. Hope There's Someone is the immediate opening wound, a song about fear of death and aloneness that seems to hover between confession and prayer. My Lady Story, For Today I Am a Boy and Bird Gerhl deepen the album's emotional architecture, while guests such as Lou Reed, Boy George and Rufus Wainwright appear without disturbing the record's private gravity. Everything circles the voice: trembling, formal, impossible to mistake.

The album matters because it brought a queer, vulnerable and deeply theatrical language into the centre of mid-2000s independent music. Its Mercury Prize win was important not only as recognition, but because the record did not fit the easiest narratives of the period. It was too intimate to be fashion, too strange to be comfort, too beautiful to ignore. For a collection, it marks a moment when chamber pop, art song and underground identity politics met in a record that could still devastate a room with almost no volume.

Essential for collectors of 2000s independent music, chamber pop and voice-led records that changed the emotional vocabulary around them. It belongs beside artists like Joanna Newsom, Scott Walker, Björk and Rufus Wainwright, but it keeps its own ritual space. On vinyl, the album's quietness becomes physical. The listener has to come toward it, and that intimacy is part of the power. This is not background melancholy; it is a record that asks the room to listen differently.

Chamber pop and art song with piano, strings, spectral stillness and Anohni's unmistakable voice at the centre.

Recommended for: Antony and the Johnsons collectors; Listeners building a researched vinyl shelf; Collectors who want album context, not only a title; Gift buyers choosing a record with a clear story; Browsers comparing related records and catalogue eras.

When was I Am a Bird Now released? It was released in 2005. Why is it historically important? It won the 2005 Mercury Prize and became a landmark of 2000s chamber pop and queer art song. Who should collect it? Listeners drawn to intimate, voice-led records with deep emotional and cultural weight.