Product Description
'America is a good place for stories,' Laurie Anderson told London's The Guardian right before she brought 'Homeland,' her self described 'concert poem,' to English stages. 'Homeland' contains some of Anderson's most incisive work, -- darkly humorous, starkly emotional, and, at times, movingly tender. Her stories are once again about these United States of America, the sprawling subject that first brought her acclaim more than 25 years ago with her eight-hour Reagan era phantasmagoria, 'United States, Parts I - IV.'

'Homeland' is a distilled, up-to-the-minute portrait of our agitated nation, its politics, its economics, its delusions and its dreams. Her tone is less outraged than elegiac, mourning for lives lost, ideals misplaced. The music is dramatically stripped down to a handful of players, centered around Anderson's haunting violin and voice, frequent Bill Frisell band-mate Eyvind Kang's viola and Peter Scherer's keyboards. The arrangements are embellished with such touches as the siren-like vocals of Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), thumping keyboards from Keiran Hebden (of Four Tet), and, on the brilliant, wickedly funny 'Only An Expert,' a gnarly guitar turn from Anderson's husband and co-producer Lou Reed.

'Homeland,' long awaited in recorded form, has evolved over more than two years of touring as Anderson developed the songs in front of concertgoers around the world, from downtown clubs in Manhattan to an amphitheatre in Athens, Greece. In Artforum, Anderson summarized the songs as 'one-third politics, one-third pure music, and one-third strange dreams.' The work was shaped more by humanity than by technology; Anderson built an intimate rapport with her audience during a show that featured a shifting set-list of new material and relied on words and music far more than visual and theatrical effects. That intimacy is just as palpable in the songs that evolved to make up her new album.. The Guardian said ''Homeland' represents some of the most purely beautiful music she has ever made.' In the States, Daily Variety declared, 'The music that accompanies the vignettes and songs is some of the loveliest that Anderson has ever written ...Like the narratives it accompanies, the sound's grave but not without wit; measured and dispassionate, but not without heart.'

On the road, 'Homeland' drew acclaim and attracted controversy for its political content. But Anderson is not merely criticizing or complaining; on tracks like the stunning 11-minute album centerpiece, 'Another Day In America,' Anderson is really singing for our survival, retelling the stories of our present state in the most forthright material of her career. It can be harrowing but it can be hopeful, and it is as riveting as anything Anderson has produced since the groundbreaking 'Big Science' in 1982. As Variety concluded, ''Homeland' reinforces Anderson's place as the best interpreter of our troubled times.'

Packaging Specs: 4 color 36-page hardbound book, CD and DVD. DVD contains 'Laurie's Violin' (7:22): Laurie plays and talks about the violin, and 'Homeland: The Story Of The Lark' (41:27), an art documentary broken up into 16 chapters.

CD
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

DVD
1. Laurie's Violin
2. Homeland: The Story Of The Lark

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003905M2O/?tag=imwan-20

From the Nonesuch Records website:

Laurie Anderson's "Homeland," Her First Studio Album in Nearly Ten Years, to Be Released by Nonesuch June 21

Calling Laurie Anderson “the most important multimedia artist of our time,” the Los Angeles Times recently noted the “rare, profound maturity” of her latest songs. Thirty years into her recording career, she has applied her craft to a new studio album, her first in ten years: Homeland, a collection of songs at once personal and political, equally focused on love and American identity. Details of an exclusive Nonesuch Store bundle pre-order are coming soon.

Good!! ....now maybe we'll get the long-promised DVD of her 80's concert film "Home of the Brave". Her website has said "coming soon" for years...

She has aged well. Sorta looks like Charlie Chaplin these days.

Still waiting for a DVD reissue of Home of the Brave.

I'm sure I'll buy it, but that cover is hideous.

Looks a little like Ron Mael.

Ditto. I have a laserdisc but, alas, no player any more.