This extraordinary album –
the product of a collaboration
between artist Laurie Ander-
son, pianist Jesse Paris Smith
and the Tibetan musician
Tenzin Choegyal – begins with
a simple bell tone. The rever-
beration hangs in the sonic
airtime, dying away. It’s a bold
move in terms of recorded lis-
tening, but then Songs from
the Bardo is an album like no
other. The bell’s ring is to call
listeners to attention for the
voyage across the bardo that,
Tibetan Buddhists believe,
each of us will one day make.
The text used by the three
artists comes from the Bardo
Thodol (mistranslated, for his-
toric reasons, as the Tibetan
Book of the Dead) or The Great
Liberation Through Hearing.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the
bardo is theorized as an inter-
mediate state, or process, which
the consciousness of a dead
person passes en route to their
next incarnation. During its
49-day transit, this conscious-
ness will encounter many tests.
Luckily, the Bardo Thodol is
full of clear instructions to get
the untethered soul to its best
destination. Anderson, Smith
and Choegyal do this absorb-
ingly. When Anderson – who
from her first album Big Science
has used narrative as a tech-
nique in music – commands,
‘Listen without distraction!’,
we do. There is a gentleness
and an urgency there. The
musicians produce a masterly
soundtrack that favours drones
- electronics, Anderson’s violin,
and Smith’s piano play their
part in this, with some auxil-
iary cello from Rubin Kodheli;
Choegya’s singing of the sacred
texts is emotive and his playing
of lingbu (bamboo flute) and
dranyen (lute) reinforces this
airy feeling. However, it’s
Anderson who anchors the
concentration in a way that
accentuates the project’s poetry
and grace. LG
What would the music of a
girl listening to Nirvana and
raised in a First Nations com-
munity in Washington State
sound like? Katherine Paul’s
melodic, lo-fi music is a pretty
good answer. Paul, who grew
up on a reservation in the
north-west of the US, blazed
her way into a wider listener-
ship last year with her debut
album, Mother of My Children.
Written in the shadow of
Standing Rock and the mass
protests against an oil pipeline
being drilled into the Dakota
reservation, Mother laid out
Paul’s position clearly: a Swin-
omish/Iñupiaq queer femi-
nist, her album had plenty to
rage against.
At the Party with My
Brown Friends (what a fan-
tastic title is that?) sees Paul
- who is more or less single-
handedly Black Belt Eagle
Scout – in a more reflective
mood. The nine-song album
celebrates a big-hearted
openness – its themes are
friendship, companionship,
the ability to get to the sea
to look at the ocean – and
this is expressed through a
music that’s a bit guitary, a
bit electro, a bit beaty. The
indie-ness of Paul’s multi-
instrumentalism is topped,
gorgeously, by her voice, one
that’s breathy, strong and,
through the wonder of multi-
tracking, closely harmonized
at all the best bits. Paul’s pleas-
ure at the simple things is
all: ‘Going to the Beach with
Haley’ and ‘I Said I Wouldn’t
Write this Song’ brim with a
joyousness that’s hard to resist.
This is a lovely, strong album
for so many reasons. LG
MUSIC
At the Party with My Brown Friends
by Black Belt Eagle Scout
(Saddle Creek CD, LP + digital)
blackbelteaglescout.com
++++,
Songs from the Bardo
by Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal and Jesse Paris Smith
(Smithsonian Folkways, CD + digital)
folkways.si.edu/folkways-recordings/smithsonian
+++++
Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
Words: Louise Gray and Malcolm Lewis
MIXED MEDIA
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019 79
