Anderson

Returning to action after a nine-year absence, John Anderson set up shop on his own Bayou Boys Music label and settled in to do what he does best: pure country. He was aided in his comeback by Merle Haggard, who penned "Magic Mama" specifically for Anderson while holed up in a hospital recovering from pneumonia, and it provides a nice touchstone for the rest of Goldmine. With its West Coast Western swing, it's proudly part of tradition but Hag's lyrics are nimble and funny, the perfect match for Anderson's voice, a nimble, supple instrument. One of Anderson's great gifts is how he feels inherently worn-in and laid-back but he's never lazy; whether on a ballad or a honky tonk tune, he never follows conventional beats, his ease disguising his idiosyncratic phrasing.

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…

1986's Home of the Brave is the soundtrack to a film consisting of live pieces debuted during Laurie Anderson's first world tour, promoting 1984's Mister Heartbreak. Only one song from that album, a radically reworked version of the William S. Burroughs cameo "Sharkey's Night," appears here; the rest of the album is something of a return to the performance art basis of Anderson's earlier work like Big Science and United States I-IV. As a result, Home of the Brave has an oddly reheated quality to it, as if Anderson is merely going through the motions of what had gone before while incorporating snatches of the new, more musical direction she had begun exploring with Mister Heartbreak. (Even the title is a self-conscious echo of United States I-IV.) There are some successes here - "Language Is a Virus" is probably the closest Anderson ever came to a real rock song, and it was a minor dancefloor and college radio hit…

This album, along with Aqualung and Thick As A Brick, constitutes Ian Anderson's thrust for serious music credibility–unlike the two Tull albums, however, this one started out with a serious intent and seems to be roughly Anderson's equivalent to Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio, except that there's nothing remotely as embarrassing here as there was in that piece of overblown North England drivel (also done for EMI, on should recall). The familiar voice is absent, as Anderson confines his work to the flute and, with keyboard player/arranger Andrew Giddings, gets backing from various size classical ensembles.

This double-disc set assembles Jon Anderson's own tapes from the New Life Band Song of Seven tour of 1980 on their Sheffield stop (December 3 for those who document such things). The nonet band includes Morris Pert, Ronnie Leahy, Lee Davidson, Jo Partridge, and Barry DeSouza…