Review Summary: Byrne and Cook converge (along with 22 other excellent vocalists) for a breezy, funky look at the life of Imelda Marcos the former Filipino First Lady. For the most part it is a success but by its end, Here Lies Love can wear on you.
It must be hard being a politician. Outside of all the job constraints or emotional hazards that come with the podium and power one thing always sticks out as a particularly rough aspect -- the lying. Regardless of how genuine your heart my be, more often than not you will probably run into a point where if even for the purest reasons, you’ll be bending the truth. The question then becomes just to the extent of which you’ll be willing to bend, more importantly how well you are at throwing these curves. For former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, a “political figurehead” in her own right, the threshold was essentially non existent. Extravagant spending sprees (5 mil US generally, ya know), pricey homes (somewhere over 100 million dollars in NYC real estate alone) constitutional destruction and modern despotism aside (her husband was an “elected president” for somewhere around 20 years); it takes some serious guts to flee your impoverished nation in political exile and not remember to take those 3000 or so shoes with you out the exit door. Then coming back with enough audacity to claim you were just “providing the poor with an image to aspire too,” while your own, apparent endless wealth has no actual paper trail. Woman has balls, there was never any doubt about that, and if anything Marcos was striving for what we all wish to attain -- wealth and power, but more importantly, comfort. It just kind of sucks hers came through the extortion of her own countrymen. But it is just this story, full of political strife, romantic intrigue and significant twists and turns from a sincere underdog of a heroine that makes Marcos’ story so compelling.
So much so that David Byrne and his talking head has rounded up Fatboy Slim for a collaborative effort at tackling Imelda’s life and converting it to musical form. For the most part they do a damn good job too, providing an album that sounds basically like exactly what you would expect from these two musicians converging. Bouncy big beat house mixed with funk, trance, jazz, and island pop all held together under one schmaltzy theme destined for the big stage (just wait!) and a guest list to die for.
When Byrne and Fatboy Slim had first announced their plans for this thematic musical take on the life of Imela it wasn’t so much as the concept that was turning heads (yes, it is
very strange) as much as the proposed guest list. Byrne had voiced his desire to not only have the number of contributors be astronomical but it would be mostly, if not all female, from a wide variety of cultural and musical backgrounds. While the list itself keeps to mostly nu-age “indie” girls and select classic new wavers and singer songwriters; it is none the less a bit exciting to see the likes of Florence Welch, Cyndi Lauper, Satigold, Tori Amos and Sharon Jones on the same track listing. Among the 22 guest vocalist is a myriad of
who’s who and
who was somebody in the realm of female fronted pop and each guest seems tailored perfectly to the songs which they’ve been given. By album’s end though, once you’ve been saturated with as many full, brooding female voices as humanly possible it all basically translates into a superior list of friends. Furthermore a statement for both Byrne and Cook that should you decide to place your voice (thus artistic integrity) in their hands there is little wrong that could come of it.
Here Lies Love follows the life of Marcos and her childhood caretaker Estrella Cumpas from her youth to the moment Imelda is running for the hills, and you can feel it. The 2 discs and 22 tracks take their toll, but surprisingly more often than not it is quite easy to make it from one end to the other, the album having a surprisingly affective flow through out. Both aspects can be attributed to the back story alone, while the tale itself is basically delivered verbatim in the style of most classic musicals, it is just that fact that no matter how corny or predictable that Byrnes lyrics may get Marco’s life was anything but ordinary. Byrne himself relaying his goal for the project to be an attempt to ‘convey what a powerful person must feel and think,’ and by all accounts it is a success, but there are times when everything becomes just a bit too monotonous. For all the joyous avant-pop of the Florence Welch helmed title track or the jazz infused funk of Sharon Jones’ “Dancing Together” or the deep dubbed out horns and banging beat backing a particularly sexier than usual performance from Nicole Atkins on album standout “Solano Avenue”; they can’t distract you from the obvious clunkers.
Let it be said that if there is any complaint to be made about this album (and oh are there a few) the blame does not rest with Fatboy Slim. His take on essentially what it would sound like if you mashed the Talking Heads’ funky punk and Tom Tom Club’s island pop together into a fine dust and vigorously carpeted his own style of groovy heavy big beat house in the powder. The music just makes sense, and the album is that much better for it. The hammy hand with which the concept is presented is what holds the LP back in the end. The constant harping on being poor (ironic because she had a
maid), the almost goofy choruses on “Every Drop of Rain,” “Order 1081” and “A Perfect Hand” (
‘The King and Queen of Hearts/could be/the perfect hand!’ Ok Steve Earle) and then there is “American Troglodyte,” David’s misguided foray into the pseudo political rock of olde. The song finds Byrne (absurdly ineffectively) lashing out against the plump and egocentric of his homeland who pine too much for their
50 cent, expensive cars and insatiable need to live like, well,
troglodytes -- too bad its progressive concept can’t outweigh the cheese. That is unfortunately what you’re left with at the end of
Here Lies Love, amongst the deep, warm beats, vibrant horns and flourishes into jazz, samba and funk its still hard to get over the fact that something about all of this just feels contrived. Like those who’ve produced this may not be living the life they try so hard to convey the emotions of -- oh wait, they‘re not? Well then, this is all starting to make a little more sense now. Maybe this isn’t so much a concept album about the life of a South East Asian despot, but more so a group of extremely talented musicians getting together and producing a large amount of (for the most part) excellent pop with an inclination to classic stage pieces. If you look at it that way, maybe
Here Lies Love could be regarded as a classic. But for now, we can just look at it as a pretty good attempt that has yielded some seriously amazing music. Even though it could take like an hour and 12 other tracks of sifting through to find it.
