sunneversetsonmusic | monthly music blog

ALBUM OF THE DAY

9 MAY 2026

Let X=X (Live)

LAURIE ANDERSON WITH SEXMOB

Released 24 April 2026

Nonesuch Records

*****

A vivid live reimagining of the artist's many art-pop landmarks, rebuilt through jazz and improvisation; retaining the songs' playful and unsettling qualities and integrity.

Few artists have treated language, technology and performance as fluidly as Laurie Anderson. Since the breakthrough of Big Science and the unlikely chart success of “O Superman” in 1982, she has occupied a singular space between avant-garde composition, spoken-word theatre, visual art, science advocate and pop experiment. Her work has consistently resisted preservation as museum piece; even her most iconic songs feel designed for reinvention. Let X=X (Live), recorded during a 2023 tour with the jazz ensemble Sexmob, captures exactly that instinct. Rather than a retrospective set, it becomes a living conversation between Anderson’s catalogue and the loose, brass-heavy, groove-driven vocabulary of improvising musicians. The album spans 23 songs, including a striking interpretation of (her late husband) Lou Reed and metal icons Metallica’s “Junior Dad”, (from their 2011 collaboration "Lulu")

What makes the album so surprisingly compelling is it's avoidance of nostalgia. Yes, these are familiar songs, but they are treated less as repertoire than as raw material - structures to be bent, interrupted and reassembled in real time.

Sexmob’s presence is crucial: Steven Bernstein’s brass arrangements, Kenny Wollesen’s percussion, Douglas Wieselman’s shifting textures, Briggan Krauss’s restless saxophone lines and Tony Scherr’s bass give the music a physicality far heavier than the original studio recordings.

The title track, drawn from Big Science, immediately shows the method: the skeletal electronic unease of the original becomes warmer, stranger and somehow more volatile. “O Superman”, still one of the most singular songs in modern music, is transformed not through spectacle but through tension. The repetition feels even more hypnotic when surrounded by live breath and improvisational drift. “From the Air”, “Gravity’s Angel” and “Only an Expert” all benefit from this approach, their spoken narratives gaining new urgency when the band pushes against their edges rather than simply accompanying them.

The inclusion of “Junior Dad” is especially moving, not simply because of Anderson’s personal connection to Reed, but because it fits so naturally within the emotional architecture of the set: grief, distance and tenderness delivered without sentimentality.

This is not a historical recreation. It is proof that Laurie Anderson’s work remains alive precisely because it can be re-spoken, re-heard and re-imagined. Let X=X (Live) is less a live album than a reminder that the future tense has always been her native language - and it's a prototype for established artists wishing to recapture their own currency and creativity, without necessarily having to create entirely new works to do so.