Philip Glass – Songs From Liquid Days

16 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Classical Fusion, Listening

Tags

Douglas Perry, Janice Pendarvis, Kronos Quartet, Linda Ronstadt, Philip Glass, Songs From Liquid Days, The Roches

And The Music Spins Dynamically Round And Round

I love Philip Glass’s edgy, insistent, questing rhythms and arising melodies. The inexorable, subtly building and changing repetitions remind me curiously of Wagner – much cooler, much more cerebral, less viscerally overpowering, but as wonderfully getting under the skin.

This particular venture, quite old now, was a collaboration between Glass and respected, interesting lyricists – Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson are some of that number

For me the tracks which particularly stand out are:

Lightning (lyrics by Suzanne Vega) sternly sung by Janice Pendarvis, for the brilliant, almost hurtfully quicksilvery use of brass and beat – as electrically charged and unsettling as the storm it describes, and the releasing gentleness of the strings once the storm has passed – only to start up again as the next storm burst happens again. Great stuff

Open the Kingdom, lyrics by David Byrne, has the liquid indeed vocal line sung by Douglas Perry rising and flowing exultantly over Glass’s rich orchestral textures, the whole like the experience of watching a bird in flight across the endless, eternal sea.

And then there’s the beautiful combination of Linda Ronstadt‘s voice with Glass’s music, played by the Kronos Quartet – plangent, soulful, tender on, firstly, Vega’s lyrics on ‘Freezing’ –

If you had no name, if you had no history…..if it were only you naked, on the grass

and finally the love song in reflection, as the man who can’t sleep thinks of the women in his life and what they brought….a beautiful recounting of human qualities, in Laurie Anderson’s lyrics on ‘Forgetting’ enunciated over and over again by the Roches