Laurie Anderson, Strange Angels
OK, I know nothing about this album whatsoever. Jack copied it for me and Dan all those moons ago…ugh, what happened? This sounds like a forward-thinking Christian 6th form play. Strange angels. It’s too Christmassy, there’s those weird Spanish guitar flourishes and twiddles, there are castanets. Are we supposed to feel as if we’re at a particularly good party? One where the hills can be seen for miles around and children frolic with mud on their faces dressed in aggressively non-aggressive clothes from some right-on child designer? And we all pat our backs in happiness for being so damn multi-ethnic and buying from the finest range at the supermarkets?

Fuck, here come the bongos right on cue complete with panchromatic wailing and fucking nose-flutes. Shit shit fuck what has happened to Laurie Anderson? Oh please tell me I have the chronology screwed on this, and this particular album comes from a weird wanky late 80s phase? Here a reference to the Body Shop but at least she qualifies it with a request to have radio fitted into her teeth. But oh dear, a hakuna-mattata-style chorus about the beauty and irrevocability of nature and how beautiful the world could be if we could all live in mud huts. Now a reference to the fucking dice man. NO NO NO. OK, a Creole reading of “swinging on a star” helps me a little but all too soon we’re back to that sub Peter Gabriel CRAP that seems to be “world music” perpetrated by white fakers.

Do you know what? I actually feel like I’m in a tropical rainforest RIGHT NOW and my god, it’s like…way authentic. I can’t wait to tell all my friends in Wiltshire about it, and, like, I really felt in direct communication with nature, man, and the rain bouncing off the leaves made me so, like, grateful for, like, everything. Man, I’m definitely gonna buy some skunk… THIS IS RUBBISH ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH. Argh! The frozen crystal synth noise! Argh! The “walking on broken glass” metaphor! Argh! The driving 80s tom-toms! Argh! The self-consciously “weird” pipe organ middle eight! Argh! The uplifting harmonised version of the final verse!

I feel sick. Genuinely nauseous. I don’t mind use of music of other cultures, but there’s something so peculiarly horrible about the mid 80s use of it…redolent of IT hippies and all the rest of it. Peter Gabriel (and I’m sad to say David Byrne) killed it. What is Laurie Anderson doing serving sandwiches at its wake?

Oh, it’s nearly over. I never expected this when I began this enterprise. I might have to get rid of this CD from my collection. Who do I despise enough to hand it to? Oh it’s always so upsetting when you hear some-one you respect doing something terrible? I had a similar thing when I heard David Byrne’s terrible Rei Momo album of rhumba. Ugh. Oh thank Christ, only one more song. However it’s 6.49 long. What can I possibly do now to wash my ears and my brain of this travesty I’ve just heard? If some-one else had their name to this album I doubt I’d have reacted to strongly…it’s just when you think you’ll be safe with Laurie Anderson talking about canoeing trips and playing odd electro-violin stuff with slow handclaps and German poltergeists, it’s difficult to accustom yourself to this sub-hippy nonsense.

Sofia’s still got my horribly disturbing DVD movie about nuclear holocausts in Sheffield (complete with copious blood, salt and urine, traffic wardens being used as roving execution squads and young mothers entering into prostitution in exchange for carrier bags full of dead rats) – what am I to do instead? Watching the Borat movie will have to be a substitute. And perhaps a cup of tea, although heaven knows I deserve heroin and soothing words after enduring that. Thank Christ.