Homeland is the first studio album in nine years, from New York based performance artist, Laurie Anderson. The album combines personal acoustic songs with the synth-powered social commentary of her 1980s heyday.
Things that really fire Anderson up are the developments in world politics, with an emphasis on American misadventures at home and abroad, the substance of ‘Homeland’ is explicitly political.
Stunning opener, Transitory Life is a Zen-like overview of 21st century human greed set to North African wind instruments. Anderson summons chamber music on, Thinking of You, and echoes classic Motown on the lyrics to Strange Perfumes.
The album’s show stopping track is the most forceful piece, Only an Expert, a chunk of pounding electro which raises a quizzical eyebrow at our trust in so-called experts: Anderson takes aim at bank bailouts, the Iraq war and climate change denial and the roaring guitar feedback from Anderson's hubby, Lou Reed.
For every blatant political turn on the album, Anderson includes an atmospheric meditation on modern existence. It's the quieter moments such as Transitory Life, backed by Tuvan throat singers and igil players that have the greatest impact.
It is not all political, though: several of the compositions are personal in tone.
Homeland, in its entirety is not so much an album as it is a poetic capturing of the still moments of a restless mind, and is true to the popular-classical crossover spirit of Laurie Anderson's best work.
Tracklisting:
1. Transitory Life
2. My Right Eye
3. Thinking of You
4. Strange Perfumes
5. Only an Expert
6. Falling
7. Another Day in America
8. Bodies in Motion
9. Dark Time in the Revolution
10. The Lake
11. The Beginning of Memory
12. Flow
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