By: David Schultz

Quite some time ago, my friend and his younger brother, a musician in his own right, went to see Van Morrison at Toad's Place in New Haven, CT. After a baffling night of music in which Morrison reportedly failed to enthrall the crowd, my friend's brother refused to admit that Morrison played a lousy concert. Instead, he came to the conclusion that Van Morrison's genius escaped him. If there's a fine line between clever and stupid, the line between genius and pretension is razor thin. Walking that tightrope, performance artist Laurie Anderson brought her genius to the recently opened Highline Ballroom as part of the inaugural High Line Festival.

To the strains of a recorded bit of atmospheric music, Anderson's set began with a light bulb swinging back and forth into a camera with the image projected on a video screen. For the next two hours, Anderson's mix of music and spoken word pieces struggled to match the attraction of the light bulb pendulum. Anderson brings a wit and intelligence to whatever she works upon and her stories and songs are replete with keen observations. Over the course of her Highline set, Anderson sang about bodies in motion, mice caught in traps and discoursed in a short story about being a whore. On paper, much of this work must look quite poetic and lyrical; on stage, it simply dragged, lacking excitement or prophetic wisdom. "Only An Expert" proved an exception: playing in front of a video bombardment of words and phrases, Anderson's politically sharp and concise criticism of the Republican regime set expectations the rest of the set didn't meet.

After opening with a dissertation on birds and the history of memory, Anderson offered a lethargic series of atmospheric keyboards and strings, her band simply providing ambiance and moody background music. Anderson's Highline Ballroom debut had its moments but failed to attain its overly lofty aspirations. The show wasn't quite thought provoking, wasn't exactly spell binding, wasn't extremely witty and wasn't really all that entertaining. But then again, maybe the genius just escaped me.

Labels: High Line Festival, Laurie Anderson, Live Reviews