Laurie Anderson – Big Science (1982)

Last one of the Newquay haul is this 1982 album. Mostly repetitive themes with spoken words over the top, it's a puzzle why New York City based conceptual artist Laurie Anderson decided to copy what Mark E Smith and The Fall were doing back in England, but it did provide her with a massive hit single in UK (and a minor hit in parts of Europe).

I've come into this knowing only the hit single, so let's have a quick scoot through the works (I don't think conceptual artists have 'songs'). The repeated sax theme on From The Air is a lively and interesting start, unlike the title track Big Science, more of a whisper over a drone, and the bagpipe accompanied Sweaters is mercifully short, but with some fine drumming.

Walking And Falling is a short poem with a barely audible accompaniment, while Born, Never Raised is mostly a repeated violin theme. Then the hit, all voice, vocoder and tape loops, the full 8 minutes of O Superman. I'm not sure if it's familiarity, but it does still sound interesting, even if the attention wanes by the 7th minute.

The album comes to conclusion with three short pieces; Example #22 has a nice sax theme, with Anderson intoning in a mixture of English and German, before a rousing chorus to end; Let X = X, is back to drone and vocoder, and is uninspiring, as is the final piece, the slow paced It Tango.

It feels much as you'd expect a 'novelty hit' album to feel. The familiar hit, a couple of other interesting pieces, and a lot that's just listenable. But it was a brave experiment at the time.

Link to full album

3* - just, forty years later the garde isn't so avant, but there's a few interesting snippets.