Customer Reviews

Talk Normal: A Laurie Anderson Anthology

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What's crystal clear, very bright yet often dark, and goes 70 MPH ? Laurie Anderson's Anthology "Talk Normal" playing in my car. Oh boy, right again. This package is an overview of LA's career under Warner Brothers with a mixture of studio and live tracks. It ends with material from her 1995 Nerve Bible Tour, so fans (like me) who have been kept waiting and waiting for her current label, Nonesuch Records, to release material from her 1999/2000 Moby Dick Tour are, well, still waiting. There's a little sentence in the thoughtful full-color booklet that comes with this collection which says that "Laurie Anderson's new album with Nonesuch Records will be released in 2001". Don't hold your breath since the info on rarely-updated website laurieanderson.com said it would be much sooner (and that website is NOT given as LA's official website in the booklet but rather a fan site is ! Weird...). However, "Talk Normal" is a very good linear retrospective on Laurie's career. In fact, a highly visible progression is easy to see when you listen to this album package from beginning to end. Much of the early work, especially the live cuts from "United States Live" are innovative but shrill. I avoided the fast-forward button as long as I could, then gave in. The first CD of "Talk Normal" is the reason I was not an LA fan in her early days (with the exception of "Gravity's Angel" and "Sharkey's Day", both personal favs) but it's important work none the less. Then we get into the heavenly "Strange Angels" with the second CD, which marks a less-experimental and a welcome and more "musical" phase of LA's work which continues through today. The second CD of this set is full of the music and poetry that modern LA fans like myself have come to love. The entire album was remixed and the producer was Laurie Anderson so this isn't just a repackaging job of old material by WB as much as it's a retrospective look on a unique musical voyage by the artist herself. The booklet contains lots of pictures and a study of LA's career through her albums. Yes, it even mentions Laurie's romantic interest, Lou Reed, prominently. For any fan of Laurie Anderson, new or old, this is THE definitive anthology in one album set. The remixes are not noticibly different from the originals (possibly cleaner due to modern technology). But I gave this album five stars because it sound great, I couldn't bear for my collection to be without it, and after all, it's Laurie Anderson.

"Difficult Music" is a track composed by Laurie Anderson to introduce one of her song / stories. It's also an excellent way to descibe a majority of her work. She has never been a pop artist. So it's misleading to think this collection is a "greatest hits" retrospective. Laurie Anderson, the performance artist from New York City, has very few tracks that received radio or video airplay. Even when singles were released like "O Superman" and "Sharkey's Day", they were hardly soaring up the charts. Yet she worthy of this release for changing the way we think of performance art today and music in general.

A better description is an anthology of Ms. Anderson's works from her Warner Bros. years from 1981 through 1995. In that respect, it covers most of the essential tracks that were not just popular amongst her fans but shows the diversity of her work. True, "O Superman" is a fantastic minimalist piece that hit the pop scene especially in Europe. But she can go the other way too, like the comedic and carribean influenced "Babydoll" about a conversation with her brain ("He says, take me to your leader". And I said, "Do you mean George"? He said "I just want to meet him". And I said "C'mon, like, I don't even know George"!). Most of her works deal with the battle of the sexes and inability to communicate ("It Tango", "Laguage d'Amour"), travel ("Big Science", "Lighting Out For The Territories"), and oddities of life. As her recordings progress, we get the increased sense of fear creeping into her work. Fear from society's woes like war ("Night In Baghdad"), AIDS ("Love Amongst The Sailors"), and jealousy ("Poison").

The collection ends appropraitely with selections from "The Ugly One With The Jewels", tracks that were recorded live on stage. Not songs, but spoken stories of her youth and from encounters from years of touring accompanied with minimal musical background. Ms. Anderson has always considered herself first and foremost a storyteller. Her stories are always given a slightly artistic tweak and become introspective searches of who we are as people and how we relate to others. "Talk Normal" is a quality look back at one of the more creative and interesting recording and performance artists today.

I had very high hopes for this anthology, but was indeed disappointed to discover that many of the cuts were re-mixed. Rarely, have I ever heard a re-mix that was superior in quality to the original release. This is especially so in Ms. Anderson's case, where the original material is always of such high and sublime quality.

Although I'm disappointed that this collection contains no previously unreleased material, I am still quite pleased with this collection. Aside from collecting favorite pieces in one place, this albumn's main fascination and value is to listen to the progression in Laurie's style and voice through the course of her career. By the time we get to the tracks from Tightrope/Bright Red, it feels she's come full circle, finally coming back to (or perhaps just finally arriving at) the place she seemed to be trying to reach with her earliest work, before she polished her voice and story-telling skills to their current high level.

And it makes a great soundtrack for reading her biography, Laurie Anderson by Roselee Goldberg :-).

I totally agree with Mark. Messing around with "Sharkeys Day" is a bad idea anyway you look at it. Otherwise its a nice trip down memory lane for a lot of us..and for the potential new fans, its a good start on their journey; (and believe me..being a LA fan Is a journey!)
Something else i would recommend is the recent "Laurie Anderson Live at town hall New York City September 19-20 2001" recorded just after the 9/11 mess in which she,on the fly, inserted some songs from Big Science. Not an easy task because she had to re-vamp her gizmos to sound sort of like her old analog stuff..and playing old "hits" usually isnt in her repertoire.

Laurie Anderson / The Anthology (2 CD set): This is a great `hits' package of Laurie's great audio performances. It is no substitute for her whole works nor does it completely satisfy those of us who have seen her as well as heard her, but this does a good job of entertaining us. I get a lot of pleasure from hearing this set. I know that these kinds of performances are not for everyone, but her work is so unique and so beautiful that you ought to try it (at least listen to the Amazon samples from a few of her works). For the fan, there is nothing new in this set; it is just a fine overview of that period in her work. As an anthology, it gets Five Stars.

What's crystal clear yet extremely dark and goes 70 mph ? The Laurie Anderson Anthology CD, "Talk Normal" playing in my car. Oh boy, right again. Nice package, really nice... hey the included booklet is in full color. Now I can leave the rest of my LA CD collection at home safe and tote this around to abuse my sensibilities with. Is this supposed to be "LA's Greatest Hits" ? I think so. The album credits LA as the producer so obviously WB and LA combined forces in the name of repackaging. This two-CD plus booklet package spans Laurie's studio work from 1981-1995 and only Warner Brothers material is on here (under the Rhino label). This includes material through her Nerve Bible tour but that's it, so nothing from the 1999/2000 "Moby Dick" tour is here (who knows if we'll ever see a Moby Dick album, sigh...). There is a blurb on the last page of the booklet that says "LA's Nonesuch Record debut will be in Spring 2001" (yeah right, their website said it would be at the end of 1999 and that didn't happen so...), and it gives the official LA website as the "Homepage Of The Brave" on the Georgia Tech site instead of the "official" site at laurieanderson.com. With that kind of concise marketing luck it'll be the year 3888 before Laurie can make a buck from "Moby Dick", but hey. The booklet alone is a good retrospect on Laurie's career and even mentions Lou Reed as Laurie's romantic interest since 1992. This album also addresses something peculiar to LA: I think that many of her fans discover her late in life and then scramble to find all of her back albums and books. Since much of her work was often produced in limited quantities, some of that material is now highly collectable. If you are just turning on to Laurie Anderson, this may be the perfect place to start. If, like me, you don't really want to carry your prize LA CD's in the car with you for fear of damage, this is a good substitute; plus the cuts have been remastered and I think they sound great. If you want something fresh and new from LA, I'd try praying for her new record company to get a grip. Otherwise I give this album five stars because it's vintage Laurie Anderson in a nice concise package. Now I want the matching DVD...

New to Laurie Anderson? Then you must shell out 30 bucks to pick up her anthology Talk Normal. I'm glad i did. How can you resist such great songs such as O Superman, Sharkey's Day, Smoke Rings, and Language Is A Virus? Just buy this already, i also recommend United States Live.

Disk one is more poetry than music. Disk two has more music, but many of the songs are off her "Strange Angels" CD. I bought the disk mainly for "Language is A Virus". In retrospect, I would have been better off buying the song from iTunes for $0.99.