One of the great joys of summer is watching a storm approach, then rage, then dissipate all around you. I’m lucky enough to have had that opportunity just about every summer. But I’m also lucky enough to have never really felt in danger during any of those storms.
The 2019 collaborative album Landfall is a record inspired by – or maybe chronicling? – artist Laurie Anderson’s experience of being in New York City as Hurricane Sandy hit the city nearly a decade earlier.
If anyone were going to undertake such an album, Anderson was certainly the right person to do it. The consummate New York multi-media type, she’s excelled in poetry, spoken-word, performance art, and music. She’s the type of artist who is idolized by your favourite artist. She came onto the scene at a time when New York avant-garde art was blossoming in the 1970s and 80s, and was underground enough to maintain her credibility but popular enough to pass some non-mainstream ideas into the mainstream.
If anyone were going to collaborate with Anderson on such an album, Kronos Quartet was certainly the right choice. Their unusual, beautiful repertoire is about as evocative as it gets, and they set the mood perfectly on this record.
I’ve never lived through a hurricane making landfall, but listening to the Landfall album it doesn’t take much imagination to get a sense of the deep fear the experience would conjure.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It starts with what sounds like an odd looping sample, choppy but ominous, like the first few stray drops of rain.
2. The cello comes in soon after the opening, and I’m a sucker for cello.
3. There’s even a sneaky piano in there, but it echoes the higher string line, so it’s hardly noticeable at first.
Recommended listening activity:
Flickering the lights on and off.