Here Lies Love

Here Lies Love should have been truly great. Or at least truly awful. A 2xCD album, with 22 guest vocalists, devoted to the life, loves, and sartorial obsessions of the infamous Imelda Marcos, wife of equally infamous Filipino despot Ferdinand Marcos? Masterminded by two of music's most inventive nerds-- David Byrne and Fatboy Slim? Oddball subject, high-profile collaborators, unchecked ambition: a combination tha t should guarantee either a left-field classic or a cringe-inducing misstep. A grand or gaudy approach that fits the garish, romantic, obsessive arc of its heroine's life.