After referencing Johnny Cash's American Recordings (previous post), we're moving on to another slice of Americana in the form of Laurie Anderson's O Superman, from the Big Science album of 1981, itself a distillation from her stage presentation United States I-IV.
The track is subtitled For Massanet - the track recalling an aria from his work, Le Cid. Common consensus sees her work as dealing with isolation, alienation and fear ("Well you don't know me but I know you...here come the planes"). And yet this piece is warm and accessible; the eight and a half minutes it takes to listen to are never begrudged. Maybe there are places, still, within a broken world that people who are disconnected from each other can yet speak and listen and know?
A striking contrast to Cash and yet also, perhaps, a fitting counterpoint. They sing of the same America and the same human condition.
