Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak

Laurie Anderson's best CD

BACKING FROM ADRIAN BELEW AND PETER GABRIEL

Released in 1984, this is Laurie Anderson's third album, (it you count her rough independent initial release). It is 40 minutes long and the sound quality is very good. It is much better than the typical CD released in the mid eighties (for instance, it is much better than the original CD version of Peter Gabriel's So). It is crystal clear and has a great dynamic range.

Laurie Anderson is a perfomance artist. Many of her CD's have been simply recording the audio section of her shows. Without the other media, the CD's have been one dimensional and not very satisfying. Even some of her studio albums come off as an audio track with something missing.

On this album, Anderson goes into the studio with the pure aim of recording an album. That way, just the music appears on the album, and all the other things that need video are not present.

This is a great album of the new wave/eigthties sound. It caputres Anderson's playing and singing at her best. The song selection is also strong. She also gets great support from Adrian Belew on guitar and Peter Gabriel on many instruments.

Included on this CD is the duet with Peter Gabriel, "Excellent Birds". A different version on this duet appears on Peter Gabriel's So. It is hard to say which version is better.

Also included on this CD are a number of songs Anderson has done during her performance art concerts. Some also appear on the four CD set, Live USA. But the versions on this CD are much better because they were rerecorded specifically for an audio album.

This album shows what a mistake it is for Anderson to put out CD's from her shows. She record her shows on DVD, while going into the studio and specifically record audio CD's. December 3, 2007

A great introduction to Laurie Anderson

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. February 4, 2006

"Nothing of him doth fade, but that suffers a sea change.."

This, along with Home of the Brave, is probably my favorite Laurie Anderson cd. Using state-of-the-art sythesizers and sonic technology she manages to create an amazing collage of images and scenes which treat the mind to its own image scene. Sharkey's Day, Blue Lagoon, Kokoku and all the songs infact work together to take the listener to a place which is regal in its sight and pungent with its scene. July 14, 2004

last nights dreams drifting

Until I arrived here, I had almost forgot about this album.
Unbelieveable. Nightmares of having to suddenly pack-up and leave the dream called California in a really bad time and suddenly go to Mom's (If I can make it here, I'll make it anywhere). I lost that album somwhere.
It lives, it breathes, it's alive and William S. Burroughs is also. I moved to FLA but now I'm here, and the sun is going down like a big bald head, in Redondo Beach, LA and living in that dream which is this masterful little piece.
Thanks, Laurie....... April 10, 2002

Still kicking after all these years

Laurie Anderson's work has ranged from the tired to the sublime. Mr. Heartbreak is a collection of 7 of her best works on one album and the whole is mesmerizing. Laurie's staccato enunciation of prose is at times punctuated by Adrian Belew's guitar, at others softened by Peter Gabriel's warm tones. Excellent Birds, which features Gabriel, remains one of my favorite songs by either artist. Laurie Anderson has often blazed new trails, but as others have trod in her footsteps some of her efforts have been rendered a bit cliched. More than 15 years after its original release, Mr. Heartbreak is still so fresh and vibrant that it remains in my regular rotation. August 29, 2001

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