This is the time, this is the record of the time
Laurie Anderson: United States Live
To most, Laurie Anderson is an icy avant-garde artist – the synthesizers, the voice-changing devices, the peculiar arrangements, and the rambling, postmodern comic-philosophical monologues. It all serves to put the listener at arm’s distance. However, there is something in her voice, even distorted through electronic modification, something in the meter and tone that I find deeply affecting. Perhaps it stems from the summer and fall I spent with Big Science (which is, in essence, a distillation of the United States Live shows) as my insomniac dawn music, bringing her to be associated with that morning magic hour on the edge of dreams (although even then there was something there that made me put it on in those small hours). This was in 2001, and at the end of that second week of September, this New York artist singing ‘here come the planes’ became all that much more vast.
When I finally got United States Live (having been thoroughly latched on to Big Science such that I was not yet prepared to hear more), it was a little overwhelming. Not just in terms of the magnitude (near four and a half hours of at times abrasive experimental music), but in the emotions parts of it would suddenly, frighteningly dredge up. Once again, it became the soundtrack to the rising sun, what I would reach for on nights when it became clear to me that sleep would not be visiting. United States Live is performance art more than anything, avant-garde theatre with minimal musical accompaniment, so in the early dark hours, it treaded my mind’s stage. It was the fragmented snapshots of Big Science placed into their larger context.
The album begins with something sounding like a black box recording, and the sound of thunder rolling, which makes the opening round of applause sound rather like rainfall, no doubt intended as she goes on to talk about the Biblical great flood and Noah’s Ark having apparently originated from New York as introduction to a story about being lost in the dark and rain. Here she uses a harmonizer to lower the pitch of her voice (her ‘voice of authority’ as she explains on The Ugly One with the Jewels) to speak about human greetings, and on the second song, “Walk the Dog” as she picks at the violin she squeals with her voice pitched up, even doing a Dolly Parton impression. Then a startling violin solo amplified in on itself to sound massive and orchestral. The violin is her primary instrument in the first part, electric and acoustic, or stringless and played with a tape bow, although she also makes use of a toy saxophone and an amplified mic stand. Aside from the beautiful “For a Large and Changing Room” the music is largely incidental in the first section, the focus being on the conceptual storytelling. In “Language of the Future” she talks about a plane crash and plane travel in general, except she pitches her voice down, only using her normal speaking voice when the captain is speaking, and over eight minutes it goes from funny to entrancing. Those are the plateaus the performance rides, from moments approaching highly refined stand-up comedy to eerily captivating moments of total awareness, with music that is alien and dreamlike. The recurring threads throughout are of her describing driving in the dark down a familiar road, asking ‘Do you want to go home?’ and ‘You were born, so you’re free, so happy birthday.’
The second part is much more song-based, including half of the songs that appeared on the Big Science album, with electric violin, saxophones, and Synclavier prominent, and the introduction of percussion into the mix (note also that among her instruments is the introduction of a pair of amplified pressure-sensitive sunglasses). “From the Air” opens this set as an instrumental (it later appeared on Big Science merged with some of the air travel monologues of the previous set), and after a comic monologue of babies in traffic, a clicking noise and a very slow build into an eleven minute version of “O Superman” which is just magnificent. ‘Well you don’t know me, but I know you, and I’ve a message for you – here come the planes.’ The gradual swell of the synthesizer peaking into the swirling Philip Glass-like melody four minutes in. ‘This is the hand, the hand that takes.’ The ‘when love is gone’ section always crushes me. ‘When love is gone, there’s always justice. When justice is gone, there’s always force. When force is gone, there’s always mom. Hi, mom.’ So simple, so powerful. If I haven’t listened to it for some time, I’m always surprised by how heavily this song affects me.
It is this second set that best balances the musical and spoken elements, ranging from the graceful and lush to cacophonous and frayed. “Let X=X” and “Language Is a Virus From Outer Space” are almost pop songs compared to their surroundings. When she asks herself again ‘Do you want to go home?’ she answers, ‘You are home.’ A big moment in its own quietly intense fashion. ‘There are ten million stories in the naked city, but no one can remember which one is theirs.’
The third set tips the balance away from Laurie’s storytelling further to the stories of others, and experimentation with sound and musical arrangements, especially clamorous and atonal, with a lot of tape loops, voice samples, and noise. “Yankee See” is an excellent moment of self-reflexivity as she tries to describe herself and ends up reading the show’s brochure, then goes into the specifics of the stage’s technological setup and finally claiming her artistic lineage as with comedy greats like Wyle E Coyote and Lucille Ball, all over the poppiest, most exuberant musical backing of all four sets. On “Odd Objects” she speaks with a light-bulb in her mouth (as on the cover) of dropping things on developing nations. This third set ends with “Big Science” in odd meditative fashion, talking about reversal of monuments, the resurfaced idea of going down the lonely road, but finding our way by commercial buildings, and building cliffs for characters in films to fall from.
The fourth and final set feels rather hushed after that peculiar third, much more dependent on the voice and the ambiance building around it. The music frequently plays as interstitials or a sonic backdrop rather than the central attraction, although it occasionally launches into bustling Reichian compositions like “We’ve Got Four Big Clocks (and they’re all ticking)” or as with “Sweaters” and “Classified” becoming stirringly weird approximations of pop songs (the latter concluding with a Beach Boys quotation of all things). It builds up into its own strange electro-orchestral climax, lending the whole affair a suitably elegant conclusion.
Laurie Anderson won’t appeal to everybody. She’s weird and arty in a way that is alienating and off-putting to many, but if you can connect with her unique and irrepressible art, then there will be much to treasure among the riches of United States Live. At the end, traveling down the road alone in the dark once more, she finds comfort in the wandering. ‘You’ve been on this road before. You can read the signs. You can find your way. You can do this in your sleep.’
*****
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