Laurie Anderson, Big Science
When I first fell so in love with this album I played it to Chris Heppell, or he copied it or borrowed it or something. His reaction was “how was she ever married to Lou Reed?” Now although a relationship with a psychotic carpenter with a predilection for Lou Reed did lead me slightly more in the direction of respect for The-Man-Who-Isn’t-John-Cale, I do understand what Heppell meant. Laurie Anderson is so…cool…in every sense, that she kind of wafts above everything else everyone else does, has done, will do…

I saw her perform in Edinburgh at the Queens Hall in April 2003. She was funny (desperately so, the story of her work experience at McDonalds just for the hell of it is a routine I will employ for years and years when drunk, I’m sure), she strapped this bizarre microphone thing to her jaw and snapped her mouth shut menacingly while scraping on the violin, she actually talked me into a sleep towards the end of her set, and while she talked and talked I saw a plate of frozen grapes slowly drop into a bowl in front of my eyes.

I had heard of O Superman, the “hit” from this album for years but never heard it until one day at Temple Villas (my beloved student house), I saw a TOTP2 Pan’s People dance to it…all the Pan’s People looking horribly confused, rocking backwards and forwards in a kryptonite-type shell (a bit of a rip-off from the Kate Bush “Breathing” video I was to realise years later), walking up and down in a line, just looking rather out of place. I believe this got to number 2 in 1982. It was a funny time, by all accounts.

Anyway, the album starts with From the Air (I bought this album when I lived with Dan in East London Street and was giving up smoking. This was my first non-smoking album reward thing). It was coming up to the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and even though we were living without a TV, the thoughts and reflections of that event were everywhere. The lyrics of “Jump out of the plane…you are not…alone …there…is… no…pilot” and similar seemed unnerving, something continued with O Superman with the quiet confidence in the statement “Neither snow nor rain, nor gloom of night shall sway these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed round”.

“Sweaters” reminds me of when I was fucked off with everyone in Edinburgh. Tying a baby’s cry to the horrible sound of bagpipes readying for a day of shitty music. I love the “Mmm” that follows her facile observations of “I no longer love the way you hold your pens and pencils”…I can see a bitchy, jutted-out face confirming the other’s fall from grace and the delight felt within. Her lyrics are like atoms. Carl Andre. Carl Andre and all those bricks. Carl Andre and all those bricks that unfold. Carl Andre and all those bricks that unfold piece by piece. In Walking and falling, she turns into the storyteller. The CD case tells me the majority of these pieces have been adapted from her stage shows…I’ve seen one, I have footage of others…the notion of “songs” as pieces, to be built section by section, music as architecture rather than some vain minstrelsy…not to set one up against the other or anything, but increasingly I prefer music of beams and rafters.

O Superman. That guy who wrote the This is Uncool book describes this song as something like the technological nightmare singing its own lullaby. Chris and I played this at the folk house. It was bloody lovely, even if I do say so myself. Completely incredible song. Automatic arms. Electronic arms. Your arms. Your petrochemical arms (bird-song). Your military arms.

While the next song’s “classical” accompaniment wakes and shakes you up after O Superman, the desperation in the voice that croaks “The sun is shining – slowly” is almost as peculiarly disturbing. Let X = X used to bore me, but just then, just listening I felt it as a soothing night-time…but having read the lyrics fully in the inlay card, I skipped ahead to the burning building section and that destroyed what I may of hoped for by way of calm. She’s such a “found” artist…her stories and songs and poems (although I guess she’d be loathe to call them any of those things) are the most pallid observation (ha-ha, the burning building is accompanied by comedy sirens and tubas…she does talk about burning buildings more in other CDs I’m sure)…anthropological, like a hoover.

Then the IT tango and the album is over. Shorter albums are so much more elegant than long ones. Isn’t it just like a woman? Isn’t it just.