\n<\/p>\n
Laurie Anderson sounds like she\u2019s ready to have fun again.<\/p>\n
That much was clear after the first minute or so of her thrilling multimedia show on Tuesday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This one-night-only, 100-minute set, titled \u201cLet X = X,\u201d<\/a> featured new arrangements of several 1980s-era Anderson songs. It also featured a fun backing band in the jazz combo Sexmob, reliable purveyors of a good time.<\/p>\n Hasn\u2019t Anderson earned a romping concert? So far in this century, she has kept her eye on grave matters. She mourned a changing, vulnerable New York City after Hurricane Sandy in \u201cLandfall,\u201d<\/a> with the Kronos Quartet. She has likewise mourned the death of her longtime partner, Lou Reed, across multiple projects \u2014 including in her graceful, meditative film \u201cHeart of a Dog.\u201d<\/a> And she detailed human rights violations in \u201cHabeas Corpus,\u201d a 2015 collaboration with a former Guant\u00e1namo prisoner<\/a>, Mohammed el-Gharani, at the Park Avenue Armory.<\/p>\n I attended and admired all those. But I have never witnessed her really enjoying a groove \u2014 at least not in the same way that I\u2019ve enjoyed on some of her first recordings, such as \u201cHome of the Brave\u201d or \u201cUnited States Live.\u201d On Tuesday, though, at the tail end of one spoken interlude that detailed a variety of her heroes \u2014 such as Gandhi and Philip Glass \u2014 she concluded by mentioning James Brown. When Anderson named the tune \u201cGet on the Good Foot,\u201d the Sexmob slide-trumpeter Steven Bernstein and the drummer Kenny Wollesen indulged her with a musical quotation. Then Anderson whooped a funk-accurate exultation and danced a bit in front of her array of electronics.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the only time she behaved like that. From the moment she strode onstage and triggered the synth samples of \u201cFrom the Air,\u201d she seemed to be enjoying herself, and reveled in the droll lyrics of that number: \u201cGood evening. This is your captain. We are about to attempt a crash landing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Tuesday\u2019s concert wasn\u2019t a historical recreation of past recordings; Sexmob\u2019s sound is a beefier one than on Anderson\u2019s albums. With musicians who can double on electric guitar and bass clarinet, its members offered a rich range of textural variation throughout the evening. \u201cWalk the Dog\u201d was no longer spare, but galvanic. This new backing-band energy seemed to make Anderson\u2019s high, digitally pitch-shifted vocals avoid rote, greatest-hits-show style. Similarly, a medley of \u201cBorn, Never Asked\u201d and \u201cIt Tango\u201d had fresh, more syncopated force.<\/p>\n Recitations of childhood memories that appeared in \u201cHeart of a Dog\u201d were also part of the set, along with some basso profundo observations from Fenway Bergamot, Anderson\u2019s male alter-ego<\/a> (as heard on the 2010 album \u201cHomeland\u201d).<\/p>\n