Dark 'Homeland' simply doesn't cut it

There are certain artists who attract such extraordinary praise throughout their careers that I am always a little disappointed to find myself incapable of joining in the acclaim.

English novelist George Meredith is one example. I am assured by better minds than my own that he is the great comic spirit of the Victorian era, but I'm sorry, I just can't read him.

Nor do I find the joy in the films of Jacques Tati that so many critics insist is there.

Laurie Anderson's "Homeland" opened at the Memminger Auditorium on Wednesday night and I watched and listened with a mixture of vague appreciation for her occasional one-liners and absolutely no musical interest whatsoever.

Audience members, meanwhile, laughed heartily, tapped their feet alongto her band and ended up giving her a rapt standing ovation, a nearly unanimous occurrence whenever Anderson appears, or so I am led to believe.

And I do believe. I've been following Anderson's career for almost three decades now. I began my writing career at New York's Soho News, which put her on the cover and called her a "performance genius."

I found her early single "O Superman!" catchy and agreeably weird, but a distinctly minor accomplishment for all the attention it received. I rather liked her wry solo performances in the 1980s and 1990s, when she would recite unusual facts and tell ever-so-slightly off-center stories in a preternaturally calm voice.

Back then she sometimes reminded you of an unusually witty flight attendant doing her best to convince you, and herself, that all was right with the world, even as the plane started its nosedive.

All these years later, it is more obvious than ever that all is not right with the world, and there is a distinctly darker quality to "Homeland" than we find in most of Anderson's earlier works.

Indeed, some audience members have walked out of past performances, apparently objecting to her references to the American bombing of Baghdad and subsequent torture of prisoners of war.

And yet her comments did not seem to me especially incisive or trenchant, no more so than much of the day-by-day commentary we find on political blogs or on AirAmerica (which might be considered a sort of moderate-left radio answer to Fox News), and certainly not a patch on the late Molly Ivins.

An example, from a song called "Only An Expert Can Deal With the Problem":

"If it's really really really really really hot, and it's July in January, and there's no more snow, and huge waves are wiping out cities, and hurricanes are everywhere, and everyone knows it's a problem. But if some of the experts say it's no problem, and if other experts claim it's no problem or explain why it's no problem, then it's simply not a problem.

"But, when an expert says it's a problem and makes a movie about the problem and wins an Oscar about the problem, then all the other experts have to agree that it is, most likely, a problem."

Some find this mixture of doom and drollery appealingly ironic; for me it's simply too cute by half. There were also references to Oprah Winfrey, Rush Limbaugh and, on a higher level, to Tom Paine, perhaps the most neglected and the directly relevant of America's "founding fathers" in 2008.

As usual, Anderson spoke, sang (sometimes through computer programs that gave her a deep dark voice; imagine Leonard Cohen doing a Richard Nixon impersonation) and played some rudimentary violin.

And yet her music simply does not hold the attention. Her group, keyboardist Rob Burger, bassist Greg Cohen and percussionist Joey Baron, came across as a psychedelic band suddenly starved of its acid.

There was no poetry in their long, dull vamps; on the contrary, their playing reminded me of the extended middle sections of the longest songs by the Doors, "When the Music's Over," perhaps, or "The End."

There was a dash of the melancholy harmonium music of Nico, and Anderson's violin took on some of the fierce, grating, dissonant intensity of John Cale's viola playing for the Velvet Underground in the finale. But the songs themselves seemed to me scarcely more substantial than elongated jingles; they could just as well be commercials, albeit commercials with unusually arresting lyrics.

One ditty follows another, and then another, until they eventually come to an end, a little more than an hour and a half after "Homeland" begins. I fled into the night; most of the audience stayed to cheer.

And so Laurie Anderson joins George Meredith and Jacques Tati in that company of artists who will likely continue to mystify me. She is clearly not for everybody, but just as clearly she is very much for some people, and more power to her.

She demands respect; she works hard; she has been doing her thing longer than some of her fans have been alive, and it has all grown out of what even a doubter will grant is a distinctly personal impetus.

There is one more performance of "Homeland," tonight at 9. Those who respond to Anderson at all may respond to her wholeheartedly.

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