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After having to mostly pan Bjork's
latest offering, I opened my copy of Laurie Anderson's latest,
"Life on a String" with great expectation only to
mutter "what the hell..." under my breath as the
disjointed aural tapestry began laying itself out before
me. All I "Difficult Listening Hour" from United
States Live part 2 (1984). I sat, bolt upright in my
straight-backed chair, and waited for the punch line.
There aren't many bigger fans of
Laurie Anderson out there than I am. I've followed her
career very closely ever since January 1, 1984 when I saw her
live debut of "Fabulous Birds" with Peter Gabriel on a
PBS show entitled "1984" (remember how we thought the
whole world was going to come to an end?). I've watched
her slowly close the gap between kitschy performance art and
commercial success for the last seventeen years and, after
"Bright Red," I actually couldn't wait for the next
installment.
"Life on a String," as
I alluded above, disappointed (scared?) the hell out of me the
first time I listened to it. "One White Whale,"
the first track, is definitively minimalistic -- unusual, but
not outside the realm of possibility for Laurie Anderson.
So I think maybe I skipped forward with a shrug and on to the
next track. "The Island Where I Come From" is
just plain wacky -- it's climbing a rock face with nothing to
hold onto and people kicking pebbles over the top into your eyes
while you try to climb. "Pieces and Parts" --
not bad, but sounds like a clone of a couple tracks from Strange
Angels -- I might have skipped again here because, at least on
the first time around, I had heard this before. "Slip
Away" -- okay here we have a sound I can get my arms
around, but by this time I'm not really LISTENING anymore.
And then there is "My Compensation" and I'm saying
'what the fuck is going on here???' "Dark
Angel?" Full string arrangement -- I like that -- but
I think I'm getting motion sickness from this song and I'm
sitting absolutely still! At this point I think I
cautiously ejected the CD and went to bed.
DIFFICULT LISTENING HOUR?
If it had been anybody else --
anybody -- I don't think the CD would have found its way out of
the dust jacket again after that first fateful listen. But
being the fan I am, I just couldn't stand the thought of hating
a Laurie Anderson album. For the next several days I read
and re-read the promo pack that came with the disc. There
was plenty to read, including copies of several interviews in
media leading up to the release of "Life on a
String." After reading where her head was at when she
wrote and recorded this album, I decided to give it a second
try.
Boy am I glad I gave it that
second try.
"Life on a String" is
actually a gem -- I guess I could say a diamond in the rough if
I want to be truly pretentious. As it turns out, it was my
expectations that turned me away from this CD, not the songs
themselves. And the more I listened, the more I fell in
love all over again. The slow slide toward the commercial
mainstream has, for the most part, rebounded into a different
dimension. This is the kind of albums purist fans of many
nobody-bands-who-made-it-big wish for, but never get. It's
a trip back to the roots of Laurie Anderson music -- to the core
of her sound and the core of her soul. A much more
autobiographical foray than those in the past, you really get a
sense of just how dark and intricate this woman's thought
process is.
I witnessed the death of my
wife's Grandmother this summer -- a woman I had come to be close
enough to to consider her my own family. I had never seen
someone die before and it effected me profoundly. Laurie
Anderson's father passed away recently as well. Her
accounting of his death makes up "Slip Away," one of
the most poignant, personal songs I have ever heard. The
expression of grief and wonder -- the description of the moment
of departure -- it is as though the song came from my own
experience. Featured here is a traditional Chinese string
instrument called a banhu. In this song, the wail of this
instrument signifies the anguish and loss of death in such a way
as to raise gooseflesh. In much the way a jilted teen-age
girl sees herself in the lyrics of every sappy love song,
"Slip Away" moved me deeply and personally -- it was
as though Laurie Anderson wrote that song for me.
On a lighter note though, the
disjointed sometimes borderline atonal and frighteningly without
structure "The Island Where I Come From" turns out to
have a subliminal hook. The potentially hummable, hooky
guide melody was removed in the mix-down of this one, leaving
only the peripheral instrumentation to carry the song.
It's wacky as hell -- there's a pattern and a rhythm there, but
the melody seems just around the corner - just out of
reach. What's left is, believe it or not, pretty
entertaining. While I can't get the image of a jangly,
clumsy dancing skeleton out of my head every time I hear
it, I like this song!
Okay, I still have to say
"what the fuck..." every time I hear "My
Compensation." This is avant garde's avant garde.
It's like rubbing a cat from the tail to the neck (while
tripping on a bad hit of acid you found in your big brother's
shoe). Not recommended for the faint of heart.
"Here With You" marks
Laurie's first instrumental on a studio release. It's a
complicated string melody that is hard to draw a bead on the
first few times you hear it, but once the unfamiliar melody and
chord changes become the least bit familiar "Here With
You" becomes a beautiful piece -- pretty enough to make you
wonder why there haven't been more instrumentals and hoping
there will be in the future.
"Pieces and Parts,"
drawing from Laurie's recent multimedia adaptation of Herman
Melville's "Moby Dick" (along with the opening track,
"One White Whale") remains reminiscent of Strange
Angels, but stands on its own after a few listens.
Laurie's singing capabilities continue to improve. I find
her voice soothing and full of emotion -- the perfect offset to
the lilting, oft-mechanical timbre of the spoken-word sound for
which she is most noted.
"Broken" is a
skillfully written song about disappointment that comes with the
end of a relationship. Lyrically it plays like dialog --
with all the woulda, coulda, shoulda's that accompany the pain
when you realize that life ain't no fairytale -- everything
doesn't end happily ever after.
"Washington Street" is
about as close to mainstream as we get with "Life on a
String." It's an eminently listenable song, even if
you don't hear the lyrics, lyrics that so graphically depict
life in lower Manhattan I can smell the smells, hear the sounds
and I almost feel like I'm there.
"Statue of Liberty" is
incredibly poignant in light of the September 11th terrorist
attack in New York. The depth of one line brings me back
again and again: "Freedom is a scary thing - not many
people really want it." Taken at face value, it seems
like a silly statement. But when you consider the
thousands of people who paid the ultimate price for freedom on
September 11th, the lyric takes on an entirely different
dynamic. Cause and effect. It's easy to want to
enjoy the benefits of being free. It's a whole different
thing to bear the responsibilities and live up to the cost of
having that freedom.
So I started off wondering if I'd
be able to make myself actually write a bad review of a
Laurie Anderson album, but ended up loving "Life on a
String." Your mileage may vary. Maybe you'll
like it on first listen. Maybe you'll hate it for all
eternity. It's deeply personal and more than a little
eccentric and avant garde. But if you take the time to
delve beneath the surface, this one will clobber you with
emotion -- with the pure genius that is Laurie Anderson!
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