The pace of the album is even ... a deliberate stroll through the Weird Zones with plenty of time to mull over the fate of the subjects or duck whatever the hell keeps swooping out of nowhere from just beyond the peripheral vision. I can imagine Brian Eno listening to this and nodding quietly to himself while thumbing through the booklet to check out the production credits.

'Susie Before Sunrise' and 'Deep Blue Polka Dot' (formerly 'Deep Inside We're Blue') are both excellent songs once available on the now deleted FILM SONGS EP, although the latter gets a slightly different mix here. 'Murray's Steakhouse Story', 'Sweet Pig Alley' and 'Mickey The Priest' are short instrumentals that make you wish they would just get on with it and start releasing the soundtracks to the movies for which Stan's been supplying the background music (his credits include five recent films). 'Mission Bell' is classic Ridgway... haunting guitar floating through a sinister 'high lonesome' storyline. More twisted tales are found in the excellent 'Valerie Is Sleeping' and 'Mama Had A Stove', while you can almost smell the coal dust drifting through the nearly seven minute take on Merle Travis' classic 'Sixteen Tons'.

A new adventure in Liquid Audio adds six live tracks to this package (three on the CD itself and three online).


Buy It   October 26, 1999
Terris Linenbach (Burlingame, CA United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Good lyrics, good singing, good playing, and good production. The songs, which are too interesting to be played on the radio, vary in tempo and style, guaranteeing that buyers get their money's worth. Anatomy takes listeners across the country to nondescript sacred places and inside the minds of extraordinarily ordinary people. Stan is still thinking, still learning, and, lucky for us, still conversing with his listeners in a way that only Ridgway can do.


Anthems for L.A.   February 5, 2000
Pete Magritte (Santa Monica, CA USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Stan Ridgway's early contributions with Wall of Voodoo were to offer a sort of indie-New Wave-noir Sinatraist soundtrack to the landscape of Los Angeles. With "Anatomy" Ridgway returns to those roots while also incorporating the sophisticated and polished world weariness of Sinatra himself, a brilliant gloss that only being twenty years older and "still struggling" can add. The best musicians, like the best poets, are the voice for some city or place and Ridgway's best work since WOV has always evoked the shadowy but sun-smoked back alleys of L.A., that lonesome harmonica rifting through his songs like Santa Anas rustling through the palm trees. I fell out of touch with old Stanard for a spell (that whole Drywall "Oracle" period in the mid-Nineties didn't seem to be especially fresh) but heard "Anatomy" playing in some video store and immediately liked it. "Anatomy" seems to me to be Ridgway's most consistent work since his Wall of Voodoo days and I find "Mission Bell," "Train of Thought," and "Whistle for Louise" to be especially compelling, great even. If you have any sense of L.A. as a state of mind (or emotion), then you can't help but like this CD. In its own vivid way, Ridgway's "Anatomy" is a wonderful set of romantic ballads, odes and bluesy anthems to the mystique of living in Los Angeles.


Mission Bell.   March 21, 2000
Jason Stein (Chula Vista, CA United States)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

Stan Ridgway was the lead singer of Wall of Voodoo. After he left in 1985 he began a terrific solo career. 1992's Songs That Made This Country Great is a perfect buy for someone interested in what his career is like. His 1999 release, Anatomy just further solidifies an already savvy career in music. His ability to paint music rather than play it is a rare talent. He is considered quirky and eccentric, but he's brilliant all the same. This is a must for any rock collector.