Fact #140153
When:
Short story:
k.d. Lang releases her latest album, Drag, in the UK.
Full article:
k.d. Lang talks to Johnny Black about her album Drag.
Does it concern you to romanticise something that kills people?
To me, this record is not about smoking as such. It’s just using that imagery metaphorically to study human need and addiction. The cigarette is not literal, it’s a theatrical presence. After all, I’m a non-smoker myself. Glamourising it was absolutely not my intention but you can’t deny that there is a glamour.
We’re very used to people establishing their artistic identity by writing their own songs. How easy is it to establish an identity through other people’s songs?
With interpretation, you retain as much as you can of what sparked your interest in the first place, but still superimpose your take on it to end up with something more. The title, Drag, means to hide your identity in some other guise and I love singing other people’s songs as much as writing my own. Song-writing never prepares you for the objectivity it takes to sing a song. I write simultaneous to recording so I never get time to remove myself from the songs before I record them. And that’s a good thing, it’s just a different process.
So how do you personalise the songs?
Well, I really liked the sexiness of The Joker but I took out the macho essence. I cut the choruses in half and cut the wolf whistle and the solo out, and gave it a feline seductive thing. With The Air That I Breathe I removed the anthemic quality, because to me it’s such a delicate, post-love-making song, very sensitive, and that’s what I wanted to bring out.
k.d.LANG
DRAG
WEA
Lang’s faithful echo of Karen Carpenter’s vibrato rings so powerfully out of so many tracks on this suite built round the theme of smoking that it’s tempting to assume k.d. has defected to the Vegas lounges. She hasn’t. Drag is a captivating detour, a concept that surfaced at the end of Lang’s extensive All You Can Eat tour, and seemed too good to let slip away. Surrounding herself with a tasteful band and some unexpected collaborators, from Wendy and Lisa to avant-garde horn virtuoso Jon Hassell and guitar looper David Torn, Lang set about exploring the glamour of addiction and obsession, from the over-wrought torchiness of Don’t Smoke In Bed with it’s trashy cymbal crashes to the painful study of death from cancer in Your Smoke Screen. The country is still there, though, in the Hawaiian steel of the breezy Smoke Rings, and the Duane Eddy twang of Til The Heart Caves In, and her version of Steve Miller’s The Joker is so totally absorbed that it could be re-titled Smokin’ In The Girls’ Room. With gorgeously appropriate string arrangements from veteran Jimmie Haskell, this is as fine a packet of old stogies as you’re likely to find anywhere. Johnny Black
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Does it concern you to romanticise something that kills people?
To me, this record is not about smoking as such. It’s just using that imagery metaphorically to study human need and addiction. The cigarette is not literal, it’s a theatrical presence. After all, I’m a non-smoker myself. Glamourising it was absolutely not my intention but you can’t deny that there is a glamour.
We’re very used to people establishing their artistic identity by writing their own songs. How easy is it to establish an identity through other people’s songs?
With interpretation, you retain as much as you can of what sparked your interest in the first place, but still superimpose your take on it to end up with something more. The title, Drag, means to hide your identity in some other guise and I love singing other people’s songs as much as writing my own. Song-writing never prepares you for the objectivity it takes to sing a song. I write simultaneous to recording so I never get time to remove myself from the songs before I record them. And that’s a good thing, it’s just a different process.
So how do you personalise the songs?
Well, I really liked the sexiness of The Joker but I took out the macho essence. I cut the choruses in half and cut the wolf whistle and the solo out, and gave it a feline seductive thing. With The Air That I Breathe I removed the anthemic quality, because to me it’s such a delicate, post-love-making song, very sensitive, and that’s what I wanted to bring out.
k.d.LANG
DRAG
WEA
Lang’s faithful echo of Karen Carpenter’s vibrato rings so powerfully out of so many tracks on this suite built round the theme of smoking that it’s tempting to assume k.d. has defected to the Vegas lounges. She hasn’t. Drag is a captivating detour, a concept that surfaced at the end of Lang’s extensive All You Can Eat tour, and seemed too good to let slip away. Surrounding herself with a tasteful band and some unexpected collaborators, from Wendy and Lisa to avant-garde horn virtuoso Jon Hassell and guitar looper David Torn, Lang set about exploring the glamour of addiction and obsession, from the over-wrought torchiness of Don’t Smoke In Bed with it’s trashy cymbal crashes to the painful study of death from cancer in Your Smoke Screen. The country is still there, though, in the Hawaiian steel of the breezy Smoke Rings, and the Duane Eddy twang of Til The Heart Caves In, and her version of Steve Miller’s The Joker is so totally absorbed that it could be re-titled Smokin’ In The Girls’ Room. With gorgeously appropriate string arrangements from veteran Jimmie Haskell, this is as fine a packet of old stogies as you’re likely to find anywhere. Johnny Black