I read Moby Dick while on my rail journey up the west coast of the US and Canada in 2001. Well, actually, I struggled with it and didn't finish it until a month after I got back. It didn't help that I had a cheap copy (from Fopp!) with lots of errors in the text, but still I didn't really get it.
A few months later this album came out and I found out that Laurie Anderson had brought her Songs and Stories from Moby Dick to London the year before. Not sure how I missed that, but I was very annoyed that I had — I even missed the Radio 3 broadcast of a recording of the show.
Vestiges of Songs and Stories… remain in Life on a String, enough to make you more annoyed, but not enough to satisfy. Who knows the mixture of art and commerce in these decisions?
This time round, it's the reflective, elliptical, less song-like pieces at the end of the album that appeal most. There are treasures here I maybe missed at first.
And going back to my art/commerce question, it seems that the material that makes it onto record is the more traditionally musical pieces. Maybe The Ugly One with the Jewels didn't sell. I prefer the spoken anecdote shows, like Ugly One, Happiness and The End of the Moon. The latter two haven't been released, but last year's more musical Homeland is allegedly coming soon…, errr, last year.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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