Songs Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson - Strange Angels (1989) {Warner Bros. 925 900-2}
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© 1989 Warner Bros. | 925 900-2
Rock / Avant-Garde / Experimental / Alternative

Laurie Anderson's third proper studio album, coming over five years after 1984's Mister Heartbreak (1986's Home of the Brave was a film soundtrack), is a near-total departure from anything she had done before or, indeed, anything she did after. The most purely musical of Anderson's albums and the one on which she does the most actual singing (though her trademark deadpan spoken-word passages are still present and accounted for), Strange Angels seems to be Anderson's idea of a straightforward pop album.

Laurie Anderson - United States Live (1983) {4CD Set Warner Bros. 9251922 rel 1991}
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© 1983, 1991 Warner Bros. | 9 25192 2
Experimental Music / Avant-Garde / Alternative

Once her popularity seemed assured, Warner Bros. felt safe releasing this five-record set (since reissued on four CDs) comprising United States' entire four-and-a-half hours. It's not the first place I'd recommend going to hear Anderson's work, but for those so inclined it's well worth the effort. Although live performances of United States included film segments that ran during some of her monologues, United States is about communication and how we interpret and use language. It's a bit pretentious, a tad long-winded, and its size makes it unwieldy to listen to in one sitting, but this is an important work loaded with enough insight, wit, and humanity to make relistening and re-evaluating worthwhile.

Songs from the Bardo begins with a bell ringing out once, twice, three times, as a ritualistic chant emerges from the dense silence. The collaborative composition by avant-garde icon Laurie Anderson, Tibetan multi-instrumentalist Tenzin Choegyal, and composer and activist Jesse Paris Smith is a guided journey through the visionary text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, unfolding in an 80-minute ebb and flow of sound and words. Songs from the Bardo is a transporting experience, meant to draw the listener into the present moment and provide a framework for inner exploration. Anderson, Choegyal, and Smith fuse modern compositional techniques with the mystique of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy to make these visionary traditions more accessible to a new generation of listeners and to reveal the ancient wisdoms contained within.

Laurie Anderson - Homeland (2010) {CD & DVD5 Set Nonesuch 524055-2}
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© 2010 Nonesuch Records / Warner | 524055-2
Experimental Rock / Mixed Media / Violin / Spoken Word

'Homeland' is produced by Anderson with Lou Reed and Roma Baran, and engineered by Anderson, Pat Dillett, Mario McNulty, and Marc Urselli. The music is instantly recognizable as Anderson's, though it draws on a broad scope of styles: She sings throughout and plays newly developed sounds on violin, as well as contributing keyboards and percussion. Her vocals are often mediated by the vocal filter she long ago invented to perform her signature "audio drag," this time voicing Fenway Bergamot, the male alter-ego who appears on the album's cover and narrates the song "Another Day in America."

There was a backlash against Laurie Anderson in "serious" musical and artistic circles after the completely unexpected mainstream commercial success of her debut album, Big Science. (The eight-plus-minute single "O Superman" was a chart hit in England, unbelievably enough.) A fair listen to Big Science leaves the impression that jealousy must have been at the root of the reception because Big Science is in no way a commercial sellout. A thoughtful and often hilariously funny collection of songs from Anderson's work in progress, United States I-IV, Big Science works both as a preview of the larger work and on its own merits. Opening with the hypnotic art rock of "From the Air," in which an airline pilot casually mentions that he's a caveman to a cyclical melody played in unison by a three-part reeds section, and the strangely beautiful title track…

Songs are perhaps our most basic musical expression
Songs from Liquid Days became for me truly a voyage of discovery. All in all, Songs from Liquid Days has brought together quite an astonishing assortment of people, from the progressive Kronos String Quartet to singers Linda Ronstadt, Doug Perry and Janice Pendarvis and Bernard Fowler. Among them, they cover a fair range of the contemporary music practiced in our time, from experimental to rock to opera.

―Philip Glass

John Zorn - Alhambra Love Songs (2009) {Tzadik TZ 7374}
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© 2009 Tzadik | TZ 7373 | Tzadik Archival Series
Jazz / Experimental / Easy Listening / Contemporary Jazz / Piano Trio

In an easy listening mode, Alhambra Love Songs is Zorn’s touching and lyrical ode to the San Francisco/Bay Area and the wonderful artists who have made it their home. Including tributes to artists as diverse as Vince Guaraldi, Clint Eastwood, David Lynch, Mike Patton and Harry Smith, the music is some of the most beautiful and soothing Zorn has ever written.

Charming Hostess is a whirl of eerie harmony, hot rhythm and radical braininess. Our music explores the intersection of text and the sounding body– complex ideas expressed physically, based on voice and vocal percussion, handclaps and heartbeats, sex-breath and silence. We live where diasporas collide, incorporating piyyutim and Pygmy counterpoint, doo-wop and niggunim, work songs and Torah chanting. The texts speak of mysticism and sex; angels and demons; and the trials and joys of love and sex…