Although she is a paragon of downtown Manhattan cool, Laurie Anderson was in a state of desperation when she realized that her long-in-the- making album “Homeland” might never be finished.
Mired in the minutiae of uncharacteristically angry songs from the George W. Bush years, she wondered what was still relevant as she worked alone in the studio, assembling tracks from live concert recordings with sounds that ranged from electro-pop to Mongolian throat singing.
“I literally thought I was going to lose my mind,” she recalled the other day in her expansive Canal Street apartment, filled with books and dog paraphernalia.
Instead, “Homeland,” her first studio album in nearly a decade, is enjoying fine reviews plus a support tour. It was all salvaged by her partner of 18 years and husband of two — rock ‘n’ roll legend Lou Reed.
Having never utilized him in past creative impasses, she hesitated when he made an offer that many in the music industry would kill for: He’d sit with her in the studio until the album was finished.
She fretted about the impact such intensive work could have on their marriage. But having spent her Nonesuch-label production budget, what choice did she have?
“He had a lot of influence at that point,” she said. “We’d work on a song, and he’d say, ‘That’s done. Move on.’ And I’d say, ‘But there’s a horn arrangement, and I have to redo my backup vocals.’
He’d say, ‘Leave the air in. It’s done.’ ”
She feels there should be some word other than marriage to describe her union with Reed, whom she describes as “a best friend” of many years, as well as a great producer and writer.
The couple has begun playing public concerts with avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn, an extension of the private musicmaking they’ve enjoyed for years, which Anderson describes with words like “weird” and “symphonic.”
More recently, her sight-impaired geriatric rat terrier, Lola Belle, has been taught to join in on keyboard. And with all that, Anderson still has time for summer reading, a 900-page book on Russian czar Peter the Great.
Such an eclectic life explains why she has always inhabited so many artistic categories without belonging to any of them. Often, she’s a cultural critic.
Always, she’s a storyteller, sometimes working with highly unusual collaborators such as Herman Melville, whose “Moby Dick” she adapted in a multimedia stage piece.
Some years, she has seemed like a rock star — such as in the ’80s, when she and an entourage of 40 staged a tour that, for all its success, left her in debt.
“On days when I feel sorry for the record industry collapsing, I think of that stuff,” she says. “Being treated like an idiot product isn’t fun.”
Yet that kind of exposure has helped make her such an identifiable voice that elevators have prerecorded Laurie Anderson sound-alikes announcing floor arrivals in her confiding, unmodulated fashion.
Current projects suggest that, at 63, she’s at a late-middle-age creative peak. She’s working on three pieces on three continents: “River of Sound,” an environmental sound piece in Basel, Switzerland, for which she’s developing sound-generating leaves that allow trees to sing; an exhibition of Anderson-designed musical instruments in Brazil; and, lastly, a new evening-length work titled “Delusion” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, in September.
The irony is that the big productions that turn out so well, such as “Songs and Stories From Moby Dick,” are what she enjoys the least.
She hates wielding authority. “I kind of implode,” she says.
“I’m a hermit by nature. I’d rather take a bike ride by myself, eat dinner by myself. My real desire is be a farmer.”
