Ute Lemper: Punishing Kiss : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This collection by the German-born cabaret and stage veteran Ute Lemper adapts rock & roll energy to theater music. The songwriting and most of the wild string arrangements on Punishing Kiss come from an impressive lineup: the Divine Comedy, whose Neil Hannon has made a cult career out of confusing pop and highbrow borrowings; Elvis Costello, a longtime admirer of classic pop refinements; Tom Waits, that inventor of his own musical saloons; and Philip Glass and Scott Walker, who navigate the hummable and the contemporary classical from different starting points. Lemper, with her nuanced, stark voice, is all rowdy civility, a woman who can capture the humor and poignancy of Nick Cave's "Little Water Song" (where she falls in love while being drowned), grow sentimental about whorehouses in Kurt Weill's "Tango Ballad" or expose the rawest emotions in Walker's "Scope J." Punishing Kiss should make her the superstar of leather-jacket theater tunes. (RS 838)

JAMES HUNTER