Life on a String

Laurie Anderson - Life on a String

Life on a String
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Music CD Cover

Artist: Laurie Anderson
Brand: ANDERSON,LAURIE
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2001-08-21
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
  1. One White Whale
  2. The Island Where I Come From
  3. Pieces And Parts
  4. Here With You
  5. Slip Away
  6. My Compensation
  7. Dark Angel
  8. Broken
  9. Washington Street
  10. Statue Of Liberty
  11. One Beautiful Evening
  12. Life On A String

Free Music Notes for Life on a String

Free Music Review: Far More Real Than Merely Memorex
Hit: 5 Stars

For nearly fifteen years, Laurie Anderson has without a doubt had trouble living up to the reputation she earned with her most commercial--and atypical--recording, "Mister Heartbreak." Her followup, the live "Home of the Brave" was dissed by many of her sudden fans for being a little too loopy. "Strange Angels," the first album to find Anderson actually singing, was criticized for a number of reasons--one of them being that, by performing actual songs, Anderson was somehow selling out and trying to enter a pop music continuum dominated by musicians the critics claimed were better songwriters and, naturally, better singers. The sum of all her troubles has resulted in a number of critics chirping that Anderson simply hadn't found her audience. That she was sacrificing commercial success for seemingly random experimentations with countless genres.

Regardless of the criticism that has followed her career, Laurie Anderson has maintained a staunch and loyal "cult following" that never seems dismayed by her departures from whatever it is that is supposed to be normal about her style. In addition, Anderson has, in the span of several of her later recordings, begun to develop a delivery that comes closer than ever to mimicking the kind of style that the birdbrains at Spin Magazine and Rolling Stone can almost comprehend. In fact, given the acolades Anderson is receiving for "Life on a String," it appears that her latest is in many ways the strongest work she's produced in over a decade.

While some self-proclaimed interpreters of Laurie Anderson are still quibbling with what they seem to think is the unevenness of the entirety of her production, they seem to be missing the point that Anderson is slowly developing a style that encompasses and embraces all the loose pieces that have dogged her in her relationship with listeners over the years. Of course, that sort of thing is going to be hard for pop music critics to package into little soundbyes of quasi-informative bird droppings--but what's important to realize is that Anderson is accomplishing with skill, taste and musicanship what other apparently experimental musicians only get with the special effects of the studio.

Across the entire spectrum of "Life on a String"s widely disparate forays into various styles hides an underlying virtuousity not often found in what, for lack of a better term, is called popular music. Anderson is not content to allow the soundscapes of electronic instrumentation dominate her voice--instead she curries and combs electronic sounds into a rich congruence with "man-made" sounds such as the violins, string bass and vocals she also employs. The outcome of this is a very "live" sounding studio album that is often a little too subtle for the likes of Hoobastank smokeheads and Matchbox 20 addicts.

Life on a String Poster

No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 21-AUG-2001
A new Laurie Anderson album is usually a thing to welcome. Often less a performance artist than point person for global-village storytelling--as on 1995's The Ugly One with the Jewels--she's also demonstrated a high level of musical savvy. Life on a String's meld of Biblical references, New York wanderings, world rhythms, and chamber music doesn't cohere like it should, though. Caught between bemusement and empathy, Anderson's knack for nailing oddball details can lift her work beyond mere wit, but not here. On "Dark Angel," she damns consumerism with lines that would've been laughable even at the outset of her career in the '70s: "Look at all the things I bought / I'm feeling kind of lost." Her quoting "I'm a Little Teapot" on "One Beautiful Evening" sounds like self-parody, or the result of a lost dare with another artsy type. And is the observation that it's a small world but she wouldn't want to paint it supposed to sound fresh? For true Anderson wigginess and smarts, try Ugly One, or for that matter, her classic debut, Big Science. --Rickey Wright

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