arthur russell – this is how we walk on the moon (1980-something)

This song is just the best. It has helped me to keep putting one foot in front of the other on really difficult days.

Another Thought was originally released in 1994, just two years after Arthur Russell’s death from AIDS in 1992. At that time the enigmatic downtown NYC cellist/composer’s work appeared to be in danger of fading into obscurity, with nearly all of his recorded material either hopelessly out-of-print or unreleased entirely…

… As most of his fans have doubtless noticed by now, Russell was an artist whose career defies easy synopsis. Formally trained as a cellist, his music seemed to effortlessly draw links between the outwardly incompatible vocabularies of No Wave/post-punk, space disco, and avant-garde modern composition. So it is probably for the best that Another Thought was never intended as greatest hits package or a comprehensive career overview. The collection was instead compiled by producer Don Christensen from the countless hours of unreleased tapes that Russell had recorded over the final decade of his life. Most of this material consists of eccentric, deceptively simple solo pop songs for voice and cello. And as suggested by the album’s cover photo– which depicts Russell nonchalantly sporting a newspaper pirate hat– there’s a boyish innocence and playful romanticism to many of these tracks, resulting in some of the warmest and most intimate performances of his career.

Read the rest of this review.

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