Sing It Out
by k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang
Nonesuch Records
SHE DAZZLED just about everyone when she performed live at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Now fifty, Alberta native k.d. lang still has what it takes to bring an audience to its feet. There’s no denying the power of that voice and lang’s unrivaled range. Every bit as bright and bluesy as they were on her 1984 debut, A Truly Western Experience, lang’s vocals can soar to ethereal heights only to sink to Elvis-like sultriness. I can’t think of another singer up to the challenge of that long note in Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” which lang knocks out of the park on 2001’s Live By Request. Her song choice at the Olympics was the Leonard Cohen classic “Hallelujah,” which might explain the immaculate The title of lang’s thirteenth studio album, Sing It Out, is probably an allusion to her status as pop music’s most famous out lesbian. Nearly twenty years on, it’s still hard to forget lang and a half-naked Cindy Crawford as cover girls on Vanity Fair. In that now iconic image by Herb Ritts from 1994, lang, in pinstripes, is seated in a barber’s chair with the supermodel, straight razor in hand, foaming her face in tonsorial ecstasy. Two years before that, when lang came out to The Advocate in 1992, she was the first major-label artist to do so—that’s right, before Melissa Etheridge, Elton John, or even Boy George—and there have since been several sly references to her sexuality in her songs. Her album Invincible Summer of 2000, which takes its title from Camus, includes the song “Curiosity,” in which she croons: “I think she caught me staring at her. … The beauty of desire is shamelessly inspired.” Let.s not forget that lang is a crooner in the true sense, the velvet-voiced kind from a bygone era. It’s not by accident that Tony Bennett has a special fondness for lang and included their duet, “A Wonderful World,” on his greatest hits collection. A much less opaque reference to her sexuality is the cover album Drag (1997), a double allusion to her love of androgyny and nicotine with titles like “Don’t Smoke in Bed” and “Love is like a Cigarette.” Drag cleverly posits that the cover song is itself a kind of impersonation, a two-in-one in terms of style and gender. Recorded in Nashville, Sing It Out continues to meld genres with its blend of country and pop-rock. An album opener like “I Confess” is a superb way to grab the listener’s attention. Just as lang sings “Love me madly/ I confess I’ll be your daddy,” her backing band, known as the Siss Boom Bang, delivers on its name by crashing in with electric guitar and percussion. The next track, “A Sleep with No Dreaming,” is the album’s crown jewel. It’s as if lang is trying to impersonate the pedal steel as her vocals waft in with “I’m standing in the shadows of this desire,” then, with a nod perhaps to the closet, “The longer I wait, the more I’m a liar.” Born Kathryn Dawn Lang to a schoolteacher and a drugstore owner in 1961, lang grew up a proud tomboy in a town called Consort. Residents don’t like being reminded that, in 1990, when lang (an avowed vegan) appeared in a PETA ad beside a cow named Lulu, the “Home of k.d. lang” sign was defaced. Locals scrawled “Eat Beef Dyke” across her name, prompting lang’s protective mother to ask that she be less politically outspoken. Her father taught Kathryn to shoot a gun before abandoning his wife and twelve-year-old daughter. Making her name in Nashville proved an uphill battle since, in a land of Dollies and Patsies, lang’s buzz haircut and rockabilly style challenged the conventions of the country music industry. Things changed in 1985 when Sire Records offered her a three-album deal thanks to Seymour Stein, the Warner Brothers executive who signed Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Madonna (who, after meeting lang backstage, enthused, “Elvis is alive and she’s beautiful!”). Milestones since then include the film score to Gus Van Sant’s Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and the chart-topping album Ingénue, which marked lang’s crossover into pop music with the single “Constant Craving.” Her most recent album is proof that there’s more where that came from, and, given her cover of “Hallelujah,” k.d. lang may be on a spiritual kick. Sing It Out includes two songs with metaphysical themes. “The Water’s Edge” depicts romance as a baptismal ritual: “In your arms, I’m born again/ And we’re floating down that River Jordan.” Then there’s an entrancing cover of the Talking Heads’ “Heaven.” This rendition represents a return to lang’s country roots, and mixing the steel guitar with an atmospheric echo effect brings an earnestness to David Byrne’s ironic hymn. “The band in heaven plays my favorite song,” she sings, “Play it once again/ Play it all night long.” Colin Carman, PhD, teaches English at Colorado Mountain College.
white suit she wore.
