MISTER HEARTBREAK

by

Laurie Anderson

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I think this is probably Laurie Anderson's single best work, although there are some great songs and stories on her other albums. But there's usually something on one of those other albums that I'm quick to hit the next button with, whereas every song on Mister Heartbreak is fascinating and interesting. Anderson's music is quite experimental, from the noises used in the production to the structure of the "songs," and there are a fair number of failures in her recorded output which makes the lack of the same on this album unusual.

I inevitably connect Anderson's sound to the minimalists of classical music, for at the same time I discovered Anderson I was also immersed in Philip Glass, an avid experimentalist in his own right. Both composures use repetitive structures upon which they overlay new sounds or slowly modify from the repeating pattern to discover a melody. However, Anderson's repetition is mostly through rhythmic patterns rather than repeated melodic passages. To break up the repetition are unusual sounds wrung out of Adrian Belew's guitar and the off-kilter percussion of David van Tiegham.

But the real reason I enjoy this album is for the lyrics, which were repeated constantly by my circle of friends in college so much that they quicklyl became catch phrases, were you only had to start a passage and everyone knew what you were referring to. Anderson's skill with language is that she is able to distill a phrase out of its common usage and make it sound new and fresh, partly through the phrasing, akin to how William Shatner would make each word a separate sentence. In "Blue Lagoon," it's the simple passage of "I got your letter. Thanks. A lot." By breaking the phrase in this way, you start focusing on each word until it becomes unfamiliar, like when you stare at a word so long that it ceases to look like that word or seems to be misspelled.

The themes here range from the literary (from the lifting of passages from Herman Melville's Moby Dick in Blue Lagoon to the Pynchonian "Gravity's Angel") to the mythological ("Kokoku" and "Langue D'Amour"). My favorites have to be the bracketing songs, "Sharkey's Day" and "Sharkey's Night," the latter with a guest vocal by William S. Burroughs, whose gravelly-voiced delivery is a perfect counterpoint to Anderson's silkier tones.

I can't necessarily recommend Laurie Anderson, because like most experimental artists, she's one that takes quite some time to get used to. However, as an introduction to her work, Mister Heartbreak is likely the most accessible and repeatedly listenable.

Apparently I'm the only casual Laurie Anderson fan who has entered a review for this album. All the rest of you are hardcore!

I do believe this work is as beautifully produced as could have been in the year of its production, but it just leaves me a little cold (and, yes, I know that's kinda the point!).

"Sharkey's Day" is the high point of the album and my favorite piece by Anderson. With its ever-shifting moods it may be the most visually stimulating piece of music I've ever heard. Others have quoted some of the great lines in this piece, I'll leave that to them.

But this stuff is not for everybody. "Sharkey's Day" is one of my favorite 'songs' (it's not really a song), but my wife can't stand it! And she's not one of those "if it's not in the Top 40, I don't listen" types.

I slap this record down probably about three times a year, when it's past midnight and dark in the house. The colors and sounds that come out of my system fill those dark spaces in a way few other albums could imitate.

There's a perfect coda in the last track - a sequel to Sharkey with William Burroughs. Great stuff.