Mister Heartbreakrelease date: Jun. 12, 1984
format: cd (1990 reissue)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,78]
producer: Laurie Anderson
label: Warner Bros. - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Sharkey's Day" (4,5 / 5) - 2. "Langue d'amour" - 4. "Kokoku" - 5. "Excellent Birds" (feat. Peter Gabriel) (official video) - 7. "Sharkey's Night" (feat. William S. Burroughs)
2nd studio album by Laurie Anderson following two years after her acclaimed debut Big Science is co-produced with Bill Laswell (three tracks), Roma Baran (two tracks) and Peter Gabriel (track #5). It continues some of her experiments from the debut but the album is much more straight-forward in terms of touching on traditional pop / rock patterns, which I think is a bit on the down-side. But then again, how could she follow the astonishing debut otherwise? Had she followed too closely on the music structure and stylistic originality, she would have failed to demonstrate a natural artistic progression. Co-starring Peter Gabriel is not malplaced here - his own take on world music in an original art rock style tends to imply some of the same inputs of untraditional rhythm patterns from krautrock and / or African popular music. The album certainly places Anderson in a more traditional sphere of contemporary art rock as opposed to her more avant-gardist debut, which managed to stay true to an electronic experimental stand. Here, she embraces and expands the mainstream culture with her ideas of pop. Personally, I'm more into her stronger experimental stuff and sees "Sharkey's Day" and her collaboration with William S. Burroughs (track #7) as highlights on the album, whereas attempts with more traditional melody-structure drowns somewhat in heavy arrangements we've met elsewhere. The song "Excellent Birds", co-written with Peter Gabriel also ended up two years later on Gabriel's hit album So (1986) only titled "This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)".
Mister Heartbreak may not be up there with the iconic debut, but it's definitely among the more interesting releases of the year.
Recommended.
[ allmusic.com, Rolling Stone 4 / 5 stars ]
