Arthur Russell Another Thought CD

Originally released two years after his death, the compilation ANOTHER THOUGHT doesn't try to give an overview of Russell's wildly eclectic career. Rather, it focuses on his late work for voice and cello. These songs are intimate and spare, but that doesn't mean melancholy. Russell's voice is a kind of soulful mumble, mostly hushed but occasionally more insistent. The cello work is by turns lyrical and funky, full of a bubbling energy even on the slower numbers. Among other pleasures, ANOTHER THOUGHT includes a shorter version of Russell's wonderful "In the Light of the Miracle," a song that might come closest to his wish to make "Buddhist bubble-gum music."

Before his all too early death from AIDS in 1992, enigmatic downtown New York composer Arthur Russell had been building up a formidable body of work that only began to see the light of day in the early `00s. Russell was a tireless songwriter and experimenter, and his evocative, diaristic recordings of this period encompassed everything from raga-influenced drones to imagistic song sketches to echo-drenched percussion. Following a muse that was wholly his own, the posthumously collected songs on ANOTHER THOUGHT (originally released two years after Russell's death) elegantly continue the sonic explorations begun on his 1986 album, WORLD OF ECHO. Tracks like "A Little Lost" and "A Sudden Chill" are all but adrift in an ocean of sound, the repetitive cadences of Russell's mantra-like glossolalia meandering like hypnotic aqua-rhythms. Meanwhile, "My Tiger My Timing" and "In the Light of the Miracle" offer his skewed take on club music, an amalgamation of electronic percussion and avant chamber-pop that Russell himself once described as "Buddhist bubble-gum music."

Personnel includes: Arthur Russell (vocals, cello).

Personnel: Arthur Russell (violin).

Rolling Stone (4/20/95, p.72) - "...the confessional force and spatial beauty of [the late Arthur Russell's] songs and performances--there are potent echoes of Nick Drake and the chamber-art songs of John Cale and Laurie Anderson--have a poetic power that has outlived him..."
Entertainment Weekly (11/25/94, p.77) - "...A cellist-singer-songwriter who died of AIDS in 1992....His flexible songcraft was brainy, warm, and dryly funny, as shown on this intimate, carefully assembled collection of '80s songs..." - Rating: A-
Magnet (p.88) - "ANOTHER THOUGHT spotlights his solo music for voice, cello and effects, which is at once utterly charming and so retiring that its beauty nearly slides past you."
The Wire (p.58) - "The selection shows off some of Russell's most brilliant characteristics, not least his marvelous ear for musical phrasing..."
Melody Maker (5/20/95, p.37) - Recommended - "...Russell plays his cello in some ways like Hendrix played guitar...using echo, distortion, offbeat rhythms and effects to embellish and drench the songs...when he introduces rhythm programmes...you think of how Talking Heads might have sounded had they been less quirky and delved a few fathoms deeper..."
Musician (10/94, p.84) - "...the most striking thing about this disc is how he's turned an amalgam of musics into a personal style...the lyrics, with their rush of words, are more nearly euphoric--expression, even of loss, becomes an occasion for wonderment...."