United States Live (1984). This is the motherlode of raw material in context from Anderson’s two-night, eight-hour performance piece, minus the purely visual parts. As the clip below shows, Anderson uses a purely American salesman-type persona (with a voice modulator to gie her more authority) to tell time-bomb jokes (y’know, they land at the time, but they really go off only after you’ve had time to think about them). Covering four discs and a little over four hours of music and spoken word pieces, this is not for the casual listener. But if you’re a fan, it’s not just necessary but vital. I bought mine the moment I saw it was available, and I’ve never regretted it for a second.
Home of the Brave (1986). As some friends and I discovered when quite a bit messed-up in college, the movie of Home of the Brave has a curious and purely unintentional symmetry with Fantasia. Anderson’s website has been promising a DVD release of this movie for some time. I hope they get on that soon. But we’re here because of the album, which is partially a soundtrack but partially recorded in a studio. The Home of the Brave performances included much of the tour for Mister Heartbreak, but most of the material here is new, or at least newly lifted from United States Live. And man, is it great. Some of Anderson’s funniest material is here: “Smoke Rings,” which tears apart gender roles with the question of how Romantic languages assign gender to nouns, “Talk Normal,” which mocks dreams for their lack of narrative sense, and “Language Is A Virus,” which contains some of her best in-jokes about herself. ”White Lily” is something I will never shake. Take a gander:
Strange Angels (1989). And here Anderson made a pop album. A lovely pop album with much more singing than before and fewer stories and spoken-word sections. I remember hearing her explain somewhere that this album was inspired by a friend’s death from AIDS, but I haven’t found corroboration online. Anyway, this is an amazing work, different from what came before, but still quite powerful and moving. Here’s her poppiest song from the album, but watch out for the sharp points:
Bright Red (1994). Accompanying her quite personal performance artwork Stories From The Nerve Bible, Bright Red puts Brian Eno in the producer’s chair and manages to sound more fully realized than any other Anderson album. This isn’t to say that Bright Red is one of the best, but that the dreamlike sounds merge well with the dreamlike lyrics. It should provide a little context when I say that the worst song on the album is her collaboration with then-boyfriend, now-husband Lou Reed, a guy who usually brightens things up with his guest appearances. Here’s “World Without End,” which contains the awe-inspiring eulogy “when my father died, we put him in the ground/when my father died, it was like a whole library burned down.”
The Ugly One With The Jewels And Other Stories (1995). This album captures the story side of Stories From The Nerve Bible, which – I feel compelled to say – I saw performed, along with a performance in which she was working on this material and a performance in which she was moving on to her next project. This is the least song-like of any Anderson album, including United States, consisting mostly of autobiographical (or, at least, supposedly autobiographical) stories. The attached clip gives an idea of how Anderson remixes her songs into her stories, using phrases from songs to deepen the meaning of her work. Great story, full of life and humor, ending with some powerful, incisive poetry.
Life On A String (2001). This album disappointed me so much. Moby-Dick is easily (or, at least, usually) my favorite work of literature, and I had never gotten to see Anderson’s performance work Songs And Stories From Moby Dick. This album only has three of those songs, and I find that I couldn’t give less of a pequod. ”Slip Away,” about the death of her father, was better conveyed by “World Without End.” I dunno, it just doesn’t move me. Maybe it’s the production.
Live In New York (2002). Take note of the date of this performance. Just over a week after the Twin Towers fell, Laurie Anderson took the stage and said, “We want to dedicate our music tonight to the great opportunity we all have to begin to truly understand the events of the last few days and to act upon them with courage and with compassion as we make our plans to live in a completely new world.” I generally don’t think much of live albums, but this one, in this context, is almost unbearably sad. Anderson’s cool reserve has never sounded more like a dam that’s barely holding back rage and sorrow. The songs from the disappointing Life On A String sound much, much better. And even older tracks like “O Superman” and “Let X=X” (which she sequenced third, bringing new life to the lines “I/I feel/feel like/I am/in a burning building/and I gotta go”) ring with new poignancy. It’s an amazing album, but one I have trouble revisiting lightly.
Homeland (2001). And now her first album of new music in nine years. This one is overtly dealing with the crises of the last decade, often set to her most overtly dance-oriented production. The heart of this album is the 11+ minute “Another Day In America,” which has Anderson using her Voice of Authority (you can hear it in the clone clips below) to talk about fear and malaise and control. It’s beautiful, and perhaps you could set aside a few minutes on this upcoming 4th of July to listen to it. Also of special note is “The Lake,” which is Anderson’s most overtly pop-ballad-like song to date, complete with repetitive lyrics, a melody that can only be described as wistful, and some lovely emotive singing. This album is a quite welcome return.
And simply for your pleasure, here’s a couple of videos Anderson made of her and her, well, clone:
