Disco Inferno:
David Byrne & Fatboy Slim—
Here Lies Love
Nonesuch
Published in Metroland, 4/30/10
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
And by popular demand, David Byrne teams up with Fatboy Slim for a concept double album about Imelda Marcos. Is there anyone who didn’t see that coming?
But seriously, for a project as improbable as this, with such potential for esoteric flights of fancy, this is eminently accessible stuff. Mostly, it’s gently updated disco, reflecting Marcos’ taste for the Studio 54 lifestyle. A heady roster of guest vocalists (including Cindi Lauper, Tori Amos and Sharon Jones) belt out a series of first person observations in the voices of Marcos and the obscure figure Estrella Cumpas, a woman her family employed during her childhood.
The music here may not be visionary, but much of it is still delicious. Fatboy Slim’s hand weights heavily on the addictive electro-stomper “Eleven Days.” With its needling, township guitar riff, high-strung Byrne vocals and references to 50 Cent and reality television, the great “American Troglodyte” sounds the most like what you might expect from “the new David Byrne album.”
David Byrne & Fatboy Slim—
Here Lies Love
Nonesuch
Published in Metroland, 4/30/10
By Jeremy D. Goodwin
And by popular demand, David Byrne teams up with Fatboy Slim for a concept double album about Imelda Marcos. Is there anyone who didn’t see that coming?
But seriously, for a project as improbable as this, with such potential for esoteric flights of fancy, this is eminently accessible stuff. Mostly, it’s gently updated disco, reflecting Marcos’ taste for the Studio 54 lifestyle. A heady roster of guest vocalists (including Cindi Lauper, Tori Amos and Sharon Jones) belt out a series of first person observations in the voices of Marcos and the obscure figure Estrella Cumpas, a woman her family employed during her childhood.
The music here may not be visionary, but much of it is still delicious. Fatboy Slim’s hand weights heavily on the addictive electro-stomper “Eleven Days.” With its needling, township guitar riff, high-strung Byrne vocals and references to 50 Cent and reality television, the great “American Troglodyte” sounds the most like what you might expect from “the new David Byrne album.”
The snaking tropical rhythms of “Every Drop of Rain” and “How Are You” are totally danceable, but sound like genre experiments that Fatboy Flim, the author of era-defining Big Beat ear candy like “The Roackafeller Skank” and “Praise You,” could program in his sleep.
This really is a partially finished project. Byrne states in the liner notes he envisioned it as a theatrical presentation to happen in dance clubs; as he told NPR, “that never happened.” (New York’s Publick Theatre is reportedly considering turning it into a musical.) The narrative, such as it is, fizzles out once Marcos becomes a globetrotting disco-monarch; the two-disc cycle features exactly one song specifically about the crimes of the Ferdinand and Immelda Marcos regime. And we never actually find out what happens to Cumpas. In light of the shortcomings of its conceptual framework, the fun-but-safe music—all 90 minutes of it—seems of less moment.
The glorious disco of “Don’t You Agree?” depicts Marcos in campaign mode for her husband. “Sometimes you need a strongman/ when things are out of control,” Róisín Murphy sings, sailing over an irresistible groove buffeted by sun-baked electric piano riffs and a touch of horns. Dictatorship never sounded so good.
This really is a partially finished project. Byrne states in the liner notes he envisioned it as a theatrical presentation to happen in dance clubs; as he told NPR, “that never happened.” (New York’s Publick Theatre is reportedly considering turning it into a musical.) The narrative, such as it is, fizzles out once Marcos becomes a globetrotting disco-monarch; the two-disc cycle features exactly one song specifically about the crimes of the Ferdinand and Immelda Marcos regime. And we never actually find out what happens to Cumpas. In light of the shortcomings of its conceptual framework, the fun-but-safe music—all 90 minutes of it—seems of less moment.
The glorious disco of “Don’t You Agree?” depicts Marcos in campaign mode for her husband. “Sometimes you need a strongman/ when things are out of control,” Róisín Murphy sings, sailing over an irresistible groove buffeted by sun-baked electric piano riffs and a touch of horns. Dictatorship never sounded so good.
