S/D Laurie Anderson

"Music for Dogs"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Ku0HL9ToA

(5 min of a 20 min piece, according to what i can tell)

I adore "O Superman" & the disc she did with Lou Reed & John Zorn.

The rest of the things I've heard (which, granted, is only about half of her releases) have varied from pretentious & boring to boring & pretentious, with a few interesting cuts scattered about.

I just heard "Mister Heartbreak"; neither that nor "Big Science" are pretentious or boring (maybe "O Superman" aside). Honestly I'm not really sold on her but those albums are pretty interesting throughout. I'm not really a fan of her singing voice but I could probably listen to her read the phonebook all day.

I love Mister Heartbreak — for me it fits into that circa 84-85 era of digital-based art pop like The Dreaming and Sakamoto's Esperanto. The sound of those records haven't been disinterred as being retroactively "cool" (yet, anyway).

hasn't/haven't

i love at least half of mister heartbreak. the half with "blue lagoon".

I like a few things cumulatively on both albums but I still prefer Strange Angels to either one.

No one's heard "Nothing In My Pockets" (linked above)?

I went to see her at a free outdoor show at Lincoln Ctr last week... Music about what I expected, enjoyed the jaundiced words about how NYC has been replaced by an entirely different city in the last 10 years ("tech conventions and cupcake shops"). Some very timely siren intrusions too.

Also had never heard her Willie Nelson quote, "99% of the world ends up with the wrong person, and that's what keeps the jukebox spinning." (And then she brought out Lou Reed.)

lol

Free show as part of Luminato tonight. All I knew going in was "O Superman" (perplexing), and I think I played a song or two from Strange Angels on the radio years ago. I just figured she'd be worth seeing.

There were a couple of pretty songs, but the one she opened with was excruciating--"Greetings from the Homeland," I think it was called. Went on forever--20 minutes at least.

All I really knew was "O Superman" before I saw her recent collaboration with Kronos Quartet a little while back. Eh, it was ok.

I see she has a new collaboration going:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/arts/music/laurie-andersons-wall-to-wall-summer.html?_r=0

“Ai Weiwei asked me to write some songs with him a few months ago,” said

you guys need to listen to 'big science' at least, it's one of the best albums ever. i've never been able to get into the rest of her stuff as much but that one is a classic (it's the one with 'o superman')

otm, big science is beyond essential -- haven't been nearly as knocked out by anything else I've heard her do (though there are good moments), but that one is a universe of its own.

The Ugly One with the Jewels is 100% awesome from start to finish. Anderson in full-on storytelling mode with Eno on synths backing her up.

nevermind, Eno was on Bright Red, not Ugly One with the Jewels... still.

Nah ugly is def eno too i think?

I <3 Laurie. If it came down to a sophies choice between her and wifey Lou I'd pick Anderson in half a heartbeat just for united states, big science & assorted highlights

I saw the Luminato thing as well, about the same reaction as clemenza. Enjoyed the instrumental passages far more than the lengthy attempted Skype collaboration. I did like the occasional sounds of helicopters hovering in the background.

Ugly One is a mixtape-making dream come true.

http://nd03.jxs.cz/553/120/78b5a5bc82_66078638_o2.jpg

http://images.ramonamainstage.com/acts/l/LouieAnderson_465.jpg

http://www.halloffamememorabilia.com/images/products/p-533725-larry-anderson-autographed-hand-signed-mlb-baseball-card-philadelphia-phillies-1986-f-aw-45106.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mRq1xgKykM

Home of the Brave extremely formative for me, hard to imagine anyone not enjoying listening to this

I'm gonna give Big Science another try. I like it but I'm a Strange Angels stan.

I am OK with Big Science but think United States is where it's at

Bunch of bizarre old LA PSAs!

http://networkawesome.com/show/collection-laurie-anderson-psas-1/

my dad always use 2 tok abt hr...... bt a on a vln bow

tape8

*

taebtraeh ym ot netsil

*farts*

from June, on "Hamilton": "It's history lite. It's musical lite. It's just...just horrible."

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/06/laurie-anderson-qa-hamilton-trump-hillary/485054/

Was unaware until recently that she had made a CD-ROM game in the mid 90's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPYOSLqN5Ns

That's so cool, thanks for sharing

"The Big Top" is really doing it for me lately.

Cities with...no basements
No foundations
Cities that could be moved in a minute
Portable cities
Portable towns

Yeah that's top 10

"The Canadians took this very seriously" one of her best punchlines

Some of my favorites.

Great list

No "Blue Lagoon"? It's such a beautiful fever dream.

Or Another Day In America which includes one of Anderson's best lyrics

And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them
We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out
But we are reaching for them
We are reaching for them

^^^ top-notch lyrics, there she nails it!

Touring :)

she's kind of always touring something around these days, often variations on one show. but is she doing shows with Kronos in support of Landfall?

Looks like she's playing shows in support of her new book all the things I lost in the flood. Seems to have also instantly sold out :-/

Was transfixed by her live show in 1988, how is she now?

I saw her a year or so ago do a "The Language of the Future" show (this is a show that varies a lot apparently) and it was great. Was it as great as Empty Spaces, which was the first thing I saw (probably what you saw in 88)? No, it's much more scaled down. But it was better than that Noah/Whale thing she did in the 90's that I hated.

Still mesmeric.

oh it was moby dick, not noah. whatever.

I keep waiting for the album to start.

this is diehard poptimist nonsense btw, I mean you never ever listen to drone or ambient so...

are you being cranky again?

I don't listen to Laurie Anderson like I would Four Tet. I go for storytelling, voice inflections, and the often beguiling music swirling around her, Big Science and Strange Angels chief among my favorites. Heart of a Dog was terrific.

After three listens this thing sounds unfinished.

sounds like a joe frank story tbh

i have never really listened to her music before, does all of it kind of have a joe frank vibe?

You mean a Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds, "Don't Pull Your Love Out" vibe? Well yeah:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUO9SDd9UhU

Sorry I stuck in the comma, so pretentious.

are you being cranky again?

haha no I was serious! You've given this more time than I have, maybe we come to her for different things, her voice alone is usually enough for me.

by which I mean that there isn't much actual "music" on this amorphous dream-like release

I'm not sure what "poptimism" or whatever has to do with appreciating drones and ambient music, but, yeah, in the drones and ambient music I like I want dronier and more ambient music.

idk I think using Four Tet as an example of drone/ambient underscores the divide between us here, go listen to a 15-hour piece by Roland Kayn or the entire 5+ hours of Well-Tuned Piano, that's what I mean.

not trying to be snarky! I will have more relevant responses once I listen to more than 5-6 minutes of random tracks, but I liked what I heard more than you seem to.

But...I would never define Laurie Anderson's music at her best is drone/ambient in the Kayn sense (whom I've heard).

is=as

Not that intentions matter, but I doubt Anderson herself would define herself in those terms either.

agreed, although there is this recent curio

https://www.discogs.com/master/1734668-Brian-Eno-Laurie-Anderson-Ebe-Oke-Dokument-2

your initial comment just seemed like an excessively harsh dismissal of something I'm curious about but haven't had time to process, that's all

Wonder if she's found Metallica contact info in Lou's old jacket? Hope so.

New stage show: ARK United States 5

The title suggests a new chapter to United States Live.

Laurie Anderson says: “For a long time I’ve wanted to make a new large-scale work about the United States—a collection of songs and stories about what has shaped this country in the 21st century. I plan to tell these stories moving through myth, journalism, fable, and TikTok, conjuring alternate realities and stories from my own life. Part ruminations, part long-form poems, ARK will also be a kind of 3D movie.”
In the 1980s, Anderson presented the multimedia epic United States Parts 1–4, which mixed music, photography, film, and drawings to explore contemporary America, first performed as a six-hour live performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983. In 2024, the year of a momentous US election, she completes this work with a brand new creation which explores how the world might need to be reconfigured in order to be saved.

i think she is making a guest appearance at the summerstage show tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI15W-BBhrw

New

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcbEHM3k4IQ

Don't worry, only the first song is in French.

I saw an exhibit of hers at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts a few months ago, which seemed to be a slightly smaller version of the exhibit of hers I saw at the Hirshhorn in DC a few years previous. Some really thoughtful pieces, including more than a couple that incorporated AI, or at least the current version of AI, since AI (warts and all) has long seemed to be in her conceptual wheelhouse. And yet its contemporary omnipresence casts her work with AI in a different light, sometimes a little kitschy, sometimes oddly thoughtful. There was an AI generated Bible, an AI chatbot designed to emulate Lou Reed (I read an interview where she described the results as "three-quarters of it is just completely idiotic and stupid. And then maybe 15% is like, ‘Oh?’. And then the rest is pretty interesting. And that’s a pretty good ratio for writing, I think.”) and an AI photo gallery recreating (in hilarious fashion) the story of her family's long ago arrival in America ... she's just so thoughtful and curious that I always get a lot out of pretty much everything she does.

She's one of the reasons I've loved living in NYC for the past 15 years, and on the two occasions where either me or my partner spoke with her - once about her film, Heart of a Dog and another time at a film discussion she was moderating - she was incredibly kind. Beyond that, she's constantly performing around the city, either in her own show or with collaborators like John Zorn (and of course at special events commemorating Lou Reed).

I saw her do a Q and A for Home of the Brave and she was super duper gracious and kind.

Just learned about:
The Blue Horn File - Live at the Mudd Club, NY, June 25 1979
Laurie Anderson, David Van Tieghem, Peter Gordon

Have to go to work but will listen later tonight

here ---> https://adjacentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-blue-horn-file-at-mudd-club-live-at-the-mudd-club-new-york-ny-june-25-1979

whoa cool.

this is what I would classify as 'difficult listening hour' though it's only about 20 minutes long

Definitely makes me want to see this tour/setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfq36DRVul0

Yeah, I think she's playing with them at Big Ears, one of many things I'm looking forward to.

yeah I saw her with them last year and it was incredible. as a full-time nostalgist I appreciate her willingness to do older material in this configuration.

never miss laurie live she's always top tier

that is 100% true

3rd-ed

Let X=X is a triple-LP set of twenty-three songs recorded live during a 2023 tour by Laurie Anderson and the jazz band Sexmob—Steven Bernstein and Briggan Krauss on brass, Kenny Wollesen on percussion, Douglas Wieselman on winds and guitar, and Tony Scherr on bass. The album includes many favorite songs from throughout Anderson’s career, performed in new arrangements—plus one by Lou Reed and Metallica, “Junior Dad.”

Includes digital pre-order of Let X=X (Live). You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Download available in 24-bit/48kHz.
digital album releases March 20, 2026
item ships out on or around May 8, 2026

(Some good Sexmob or Sex Mob platters on Bandcamp as well, ditto other experiences instigated by or incl. Steven Bernstein.)

very cool. the show I saw her do with sexmob was kind of a dream come true, for someone who doesn't revist her 'back catalog' I never thought I'd see her perform some of that stuff again.