Antony Szmierek has always believed in signs from the universe. He’s the kind of person to see a crisp packet float by and takes it as a message to text his ex. One of these came in the form of a heron nesting along the banks of the Mersey that he revisited for years. Antony saw himself in the bird: a creature of two worlds, caught between water and land, just as he found himself between his ordinary Manchester life and newfound public attention.

Decoding Birdsong follows the wild success of his debut album, 2025’s Service Station at the End of the Universe, which launched Antony into a whirlwind of Glastonbury, Jools Holland, and repeat BBC airplay. He’s sold out venues across the UK and Europe, and in February 2026 performed to 20,000 while closing Solomun’s Alexandra Palace shows. The former English teacher had been working at a college for special needs students when his blend of spoken word and dance music started taking off, earning him accolades such as 6Music’s Artist of the Year in 2023 following his Poems To Dance To EP, and frequent comparisons to Mike Skinner, Jarvis Cocker and John Cooper Clarke.

Antony’s gigs have become something of a communion, with him leaping into crowds, learning people’s names, and the room singing back fan favourites like ‘The Words To Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘Rafters’. He’ll frequently get emotional at his shows, inspired by how much the crowd is feeling, and his lyrics have been used everywhere from weddings to funerals and messages on dating apps. He wanted to lean into this on Decoding Birdsong, asking himself: “How can I be a catalyst for first kisses, and tears, and people meeting strangers?”

Service Station at the End of the Universe was rooted in Greater Manchester, its locals and landmarks, such as the Stockport Pyramid. And he began feeling the consequences of that: suddenly, everyone knew his name at the pub – on some days, that felt good; on others it made him feel like he was in The Truman Show. Feeling like something needed to change after a year of experiencing the industry’s high highs and low lows, Antony recently relocated to Bristol, trading the familiar for distance and peace. He allowed himself to sit more comfortably with his success – “it’s like a mosh pit where it’s safer to run around in it” – than what he’d been doing previously, retreating to his “shitty Manchester flat” and pretending nothing in his life had changed.

The record draws heavily on his personal touchstones in electronic music – Four Tet, Caribou, LCD Soundsystem. “A repetitive beat and a dark room is womb-like to me,” he says. “I’m a lyrics-first person so it took me a long time to realise why I liked it so much. But it’s this safe space where I can just be in the dark and close my eyes.” Dance music has threaded itself through his life, from hearing ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’ as a kid at Blackpool Illuminations to losing himself in warehouse raves during his reckless student days in Huddersfield.

The album sees Antony musing on luck, chance and serendipity. Sawtoothed electro track ‘Chalk’ came from watching snooker documentary Ronnie O’Sullivan: The Edge of Everything and the idea that chalking a cue makes a marginal difference to the outcome – a metaphor for chaos theory and the win-or-lose nature of the music industry. ‘The First Five Minutes Of Magnolia’ – a slab of bright filter house with grungy NY guitars – digs into the idea of random coincidences as shown in the 1999 Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Elsewhere, Antony zooms in on real places to smuggle in metaphors: ‘Dave’s Angling Superstore’ is based on a now-closed fishing shop in Bolton which had a swinger’s club hidden behind it. Lightning-paced with a Gorillaz-esque chorus, the track finds Antony making an impassioned call to “find something you love then get lost all in it”. It’s about “grounding big ideas in mundane places that people drive past,” he says, “or something that people might find disgusting, but that’s some people’s reason to be here.” Antony’s wordplay will always be central to his music – his love of language was laid out in his debut book Roadmap, published by Faber last year – but this record finds him taking inspiration from post-punk and layering the lyrics within the groove – something he describes as “hiding the peas in the mash”.

Disco-inflected house track ‘The Heron’ is a direct nod to his avian companion – a taxidermied bird from the 1920s that he’s named Ken appears on the record’s artwork – and the idea of cosmic symbols. “I wanna believe in magic,” he says. “I wish the sky would fucking unzip and there’s just a big guy there, like, ‘You were in a fish tank.’ It’s very working class to value myths and fables, pub stories and that stuff.” For him, the bird is also a simple symbol to remind him of what’s important amid the rise of AI, people’s overreliance on screens and the dread-inducing news cycle.

Where his debut had been a solo endeavour, Decoding Birdsong brims with collaboration, including Australia’s Pretty Girl, London band Los Bitchos, and Bristol producer 1-800 GIRLS. Antony came at it from a concept of juxtaposition: he chose Imogen and the Knife’s balladic voice for melodic techno track ‘Flight Simulator’, while indie pop star Ellur features on the garage-leaning ‘Bookie’s Favourite’. Working with longtime producer Max Rad, they took a more impulsive and band-like approach to creation – laying down a bassline and improvising, which ended up creating some of the best moments. “I’m not from music – I’ve sort of been thrust into this by accident,” he says, “but because I love music and consume it a lot, I think I have good instinct.”

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