David Byrne and Fatboy Slim's double-disc collaboration, Here Lies Love, is out this week. The album, which documents the early life and rise to power of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, is the subject of a feature article in the Financial Times. Writer Ludovic Hunter-Tilney spoke with Byrne about his collaboration with Fatboy Slim and a who’s who of vocalists, including Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Kate Pierson, Santigold, and St. Vincent. "The results, as with the best of Byrne’s work, are both intelligent and highly entertaining," says Hunter-Tilney. "With beats largely supplied by Cook, the music skips through disco, funk, Broadway and kitsch exotica."

The two go on to discuss the complexities of presenting the life of such an often-caricatured yet hardly straightforward figure as Imelda Marcos. While she represented a corrupt and repressive regime, she remains a beloved figure among many of her countrymen to this day, a dichotomy Byrne chose to address "obliquely," as he says. For Hunter-Tilney, this "subtle approach has advantages too. Here Lies Love’s beguiling music and vivid lyrics evoke Imelda Marcos’s corrupt, seductive glamour."

There's much more at ft.com.

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Here Lies Love receives four stars from the Times of London. Byrne and Fatboy Slim's "navigation of the narrative is impeccable, as Marcos uses her steely resolve to rise above her troubled childhood," writes reviewer Pete Paphides. It all begins with the opening, title track, on which "Florence Welch skilfully negotiates bustling breaks and orchestral flourishes on a showtune that outlines Marcos’s intentions," and runs through 22 songs and the end of the Marcos reign, with nary a mention of Imelda's notoriously abundant shoe closets. "By that time," Paphides concludes, "you’ll have realised why Byrne avoided writing about the shoe collection. It’s one of her life’s least interesting details."

Read the complete four-star review at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.

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The Boston Globe calls it "a sumptuous two-disc feast of harmony, melody, and Latin-accented grooves that the Studio 54-loving Marcos herself would likely appreciate." Globe music critic Sarah Rodman explains that the album's songs even work independent of the story that connects them, from the "gorgeous swooping vocals" of the title track to "the beauty of the percolating bass lines and ticking high hats" on the first disc's closing tune. Even so, the album's myriad of vocalists proves "more than up to the task" of telling the story at hand. Rodman calls particular attention to the contribution from the "perfectly cast" Natalie Merchant. Read more at boston.com.

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Here Lies Love "works so well and so strangely," writes Huffington Post reviewer Mike Ragogna, "that you'll wonder why it's never been done before." Ragogna says that "Fatboy Norman Cook's dance beats combined with Byrne's latin of late are a set of satin sheets that all participating artists should have been honored to sing over or be sampled on." He has kind words for those artists as well, concluding that "the talent gathered here was spot-on." Read the review at huffingtonpost.com.

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The Washington Post's Express Night Out says the album "sounds like it was made with love." Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner writes that Fatboy Slim "proves a sensitive producer, building the music around the songs, adjusting it to fit the strengths of the various singers, and incorporating swatches of samba, meringue, funk, disco, Tropicália and a world of styles." The album's many guest vocalists "invest these songs with personality and emotion," says Deusner, and Byrne, in his lyrics, "proves both generous and sympathetic, filling these songs with telling biographical details and never portraying his subject as simply a monster."

Echoing the sentiments Byrne expressed in the Financial Times article, Deusner find that "Imelda comes across as deeply flawed and deluded, but also deeply human. Byrne's equanimity toward this divisive figure gives the album its considerable impact and surprising emotional resonance."

You'll find the complete review at expressnightout.com.

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The Star-Ledger's Jay Lustig says "the album finds Byrne reconnecting with his pop roots in a big way. He hasn’t made as instantly enjoyable an album since Talking Heads disbanded." Lustig echoes Rodman's assessment when he asserts that, even independent of the album's overarching story, "most songs are perfectly enjoyable in their own right, anyway." Read more at nj.com.