Drowned in Sound gives Laurie Anderson's new album, Homeland, an 8 out of 10, citing its "glittering 11-minute centrepiece, ‘Another Day in America,'" featuring her male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot, as exemplary of Anderson's ability to address challenging subjects with wit. Homeland, the review concludes, is ultimately "a record made up of journeys, through poetry, morality, America, through sound itself."
Laurie Anderson's new album, Homeland, continues to earn critical praise from around the world. Drowned in Sound, out of the UK, rates the album an 8 out of 10.
Reviewer Sam Kinchin-Smith cites the album's "glittering 11-minute centrepiece, ‘Another Day in America,'" as exemplary of Anderson's ability to introduce challenging subjects with wit. The song includes vocals from Anderson's male alter ego, Fenway Bergamot (also featured on the cover and in a series of videos on nonesuch.com/media), as part of "a synth-swept, Antony Hegarty-flecked voyage that begins as a mesmerising sequence of reflection and anecdote," says Kinchin-Smith, "and ends an aching study of the contemporary American experience."
As Anderson has described in the video excerpt from the DVD included with the album, she culled what ultimately became the album's tracks from an endless array of files she had collected from various performances and locations. That being true, "Homeland’s biggest achievement," says Kinchin-Smith, "is to sculpt a lot of minutes of material ... into something that feels textured and whole, rather than flatly fragmented."
Homeland, the review concludes, is ultimately "a record made up of journeys, through poetry, morality, America, through sound itself."
Read the complete review at drownedinsound.com.
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