Laurie Anderson Faces Catastrophe with Clarity on ‘Let X=X’

Laurie Anderson opens her new live album with a calm that lands somewhere between a flight announcement and a eulogy. “This is your captain / We are going down / We are all going down / Together,” she says, backed by the unconventional jazz ensemble Sexmob. The words feel like a headline from the current year, but Anderson’s delivery strips them of panic. She’s not here to soothe or to save. Across Let X=X, she settles into a role more interesting than that of a prophet: a clear-eyed observer who knows that few problems have clean solutions.

The record functions as a time capsule of this particular moment, a purpose Anderson acknowledges when she states, “This is the time / And this is the record of a time.” Between songs, she threads through memories, lessons from past mentors, and sharp commentary on our evolving relationship with technology. Her assessment of AI feels particularly precise. “Bots,” she says, “are the new angels. Like angels, they come from another world; like angels, they were invented by humans, and they like it when we talk to them.” A vocoder twists her voice into something uncanny, mirroring the looped logic of machines. She then asks who is really doing the copying. It’s a critique delivered with the authority of someone who has spent decades pushing technology into artistic territory.

Her arguments are grounded not just in theory but in personal history. She revives a haunting memory of saving her brothers from a frozen lake, her mother’s unexpected praise providing a complicated lesson in cause and effect. A rough, violin-heavy take on “Junior Dad”—a Lou Reed and Metallica song—slides into “O Superman,” her own strange hit. And when she addresses the rise of depression before launching into the grinding “Church of Panic,” the political and the intimate collapse into a single, uneasy truth. Anderson doesn’t pretend that bots or better tech will rescue us. She’s just here to talk, because talking honestly about the descent still counts for something.