Laurie Anderson Offers Career-Spanning Set & Lou Reed Cover On ‘Tiny Desk Concert’

Laurie Anderson recently graced NPR HQ to film a Tiny Desk Concert. The esteemed artist delivered a career-spanning set along with a cover from her late husband Lou Reed.

Captured just after a performance at Big Ears Festival in Tennessee, Anderson’s Tiny Desk saw her reducing her seven-piece to a trio including violinist Martha Mooke and multi-instrumentalist Doug Wieselman. Anderson and company opened the session with 1982 standout “Let X=X.” The track also titled a new live album with Sexmob, which arrived on May 8.

NPR Music further detailed Laurie Anderson’s Tiny Desk:

“Let X=X,” with its inscrutable references, random yet consequential, is from her debut album Big Science. It might be telling us what you see is what you get, but also that it’s OK to let the unknowable be what it is. “The Letter,” which follows, is from her latest, Amelia, a moving travelogue following the flight path of the famed pilot. From the desolation of her late husband Lou Reed’s “Dirty Blvd.,” Anderson shifts to brief moments of beauty — a paean to the stars above and a dream of being a dog.

Watch Laurie Anderson’s Tiny Desk Concert below: