The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
CD Reviews  |  Classical  |  Live Reviews  |  Music Features

Laurie Anderson

Big Science | Nonesuch
By TED DROZDOWSKI  |  August 14, 2007
3.0 3.0 Stars
inside_laurie-anderson---bi
One of the most important albums of the ’80s has been re-released with two appealing extras: the video for the breakthrough hit “O Superman” and its vinyl 45 B-side, “Walking the Dog.” Big Science has also been remastered to restore the low-end sonics of the original vinyl pressing. When you listen 25 years later, it’s chilling how prescient Anderson’s vision — inspired by her travels around the country during the Carter and Reagan years — of a technologically and culturally faltering America has proved. In the age of Homeland Security, “O Superman,” with its low-key industrial throb and raspy vocoder-processed lyrics, rings its warning of fear-fed fascism even more loudly. This disc’s nine original tunes became the foundation of her expansive examination of American life, United States, but “O Superman” — which turned Anderson from a scrappy downtown NYC artist into an international star after British DJ John Peel began spinning her original self-made single — was a wake-up call. It launched the home-studio revolution by validating the efforts of solitary musical tinkerers everywhere, and it paved the way for the mainstream acceptance of early electropop trailblazers like Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark and Depeche Mode. Anderson outlines the process of creating the album and, in particular, “O Superman” in this set’s liner notes; she also explains her own reckoning with “O Superman” as timeless. “In September 2001,” she writes, “I was on tour and played ‘O Superman’ at Town Hall in New York City. The show was one week after 9/11, and as I sang ‘Here come the planes/They’re American planes,’ I suddenly realized I was singing about the present."
Related: Mooninites invade; all hell breaks loose, Protesting too much, Wolf Eyes, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Laurie Anderson, Terrorism, War and Conflict,  More more >
  • Share:
  • Share this entry with Facebook
  • Share this entry with Digg
  • Share this entry with Delicious
  • RSS feed
  • Email this article to a friend
  • Print this article
Comments

ARTICLES BY TED DROZDOWSKI
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   RICKIE LEE JONES | BALM IN GILEAD  |  December 02, 2009
    It’s astonishing to think that Rickie Lee Jones would turn out an album this organic and free of cynicism 30 years after her debut with the star-making, retro-hipster hit “Chuck E.’s in Love.” Particularly since her songwriting has always been so acutely self-aware.
  •   MYSTIC MUSO  |  November 04, 2009
    “America’s Pre-eminent Music Writer Dead at 52” was the headline on Robert Palmer’s obituary in Rolling Stone after his liver failed in 1997.
  •   BRENDAN HOGAN | LONG NIGHT COMING  |  October 21, 2009
    Self-released (2009)
  •   DARRELL NULISCH | JUST FOR YOU  |  October 22, 2009
    This Boston-based blues and soul singer’s seventh album might seem an update of the elegantly funky Stax sound, with its deep grooves and smartly harmonized horns.
  •   REVIEW: TOM RUSSELL | BLOOD AND CANDLE SMOKE  |  September 22, 2009
    This LA-born troubadour with a Dustbowl voice works voodoo on his 24th studio album, conjuring ghosts of the ’60s and ’70s along with apocalyptic visions as he relates tales of gun-toting madmen and dark rifts of the heart.

 See all articles by: TED DROZDOWSKI

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group