THE UGLY ONE WITH THE JEWELS AND OTHER STORIES: A READING FROM STORIES FROM THE NERVE BIBLE

Well, the title is accurate: these are story-readings accompanied by a delicate musical background of keyboards, percussion, surdo, some violin and guitar (only two men on stage besides Laurie). It is mostly just Laurie's irresistible voice telling stories. Sounds boring? To be sure, if Laurie Anderson is not in your list of favourite female artists, and if you're not so keen of hearing stories from an album, you can forget this.

But I dare say this is one of my favourite albums from her. It is somehow spellbinding. The atmosphere is gorgeous. It doesn't work as background listening, instead you have to listen closely to the stories themselves, free of any noises around. Then you can imagine being there in the mesmerized audience, seeing the trio performing in front of you, and be taken away by the stories - to the North Pole, among some primitive tribe, to an amusing park with Andy Kaufman, across the Ouija board, in a dark sleeping room with alarm clock beeping, etc etc.

On the other hand the album, with its 18 tracks, can turn out to be rather monotonous and your concentration may not hold on to the end. But who says you should always play the whole album through? One could even use random button to make sure every time there's a different listening experience. Friends of the minimalistic audio-art of Laurie Anderson, be sure to check this one out! (For newcomers it's perhaps safer to start with Strange Angels for example.)