Eating the peach

IN the past couple of years, k.d. tang got the chance to satisfy in any cravings - for fame, fashion and glamorous girls. After many years of yearning, the Canadian singer with the lower-case name finally had her wishes granted when her Ingenue album became a massive cross-over hit; then before you could say "Cinderella," Lang found herself in the cover of Vanity Fair with a handsome princess named Cindy Crawford, and also got to wear her Dolce & Gabbana to the ball. For a lesbian country singer from Consort, Canada, this was indeed a fairy tale come true: Hollywood had opened its doors like a sweetshop, and Lang was free to stuff her face till she felt sick.

Instead of choking on success, however, k.d. Lang turned, her cloying experience into a bittersweet collection of songs, all of which can be heard on her new album, All You Can Eat. It's as different from Ingenue as chalk is from cheesecake, and the country flavours are somewhat overpowered by a potent mix of soul and funk influences. The title does not, of course, refer to food, nor to a specific sexual practice, but to the whole cornucopia of experiences and which were symbolically laid out before the young ingenue on her first entry into Hollywood Babylon. Didn't she try any of the dishes on offer?

"Well, yeah, inn some aspects, yeah, definitely," she laughs, then quickly moves to quell the media appetite for scandal, explaining: "It's about a balanced diet, let's say it's about learning what works best for you mand what you really enjoy eating and what you really don't."

Lang is speaking on the phone from Richmond, Virginia, the latest stop on her American tour which started earlier this year. Next week she arrives in Ireland, bringing her nine-piece band along for dates in Dublin's Point and Galway's Leisureland, and no doubt she'll be offering up a generous helping from her mouthwateringly-titled new album. Given the huge success of the album's predecessor, Ingenue, and the relatively modest performance of All You Can Eat, is she worried that sales of the new record might be a comedown from the dizzy heights of the last one?

"It's doing OK," Lang replies diplomatically. "Every record I put out is a slow thing - Ingenue took seven months to take off, so this one's doing fine. I think the tour is going to help it a lot.

"It's always going to be disappointing to take"a step down from where you were, but I don't expect to have an album like Ingenue every time, and I think it's probably the best thing in the long run. I mean, it's always gonna be an adjustment no matter what. If it's more successful or less successful it's gonna be an adjustment. But you know I wouldn't sit here and lie to you and say I don't want it to be successful. You know, I'm proud of the record, and I think I did my best, creatively, on it, and you know, we'll see what happens."

I get the impression that k.d. prefers the slow-burn approach to success over the quick-fire route to fame. "Yeah, I think if it happens too fast, then it goes away just as fast. I think when you build something slowly it has a better foundation."

Kathryn Dawn Lang's constant craving for success began when she entered her first singing contest at the age of five, and continued through her teens, when she learned guitar and piano, and also began spelling her name in lower case. She played the part of her heroine, Patsy Cline, in a college musical, but a more telling part came earlier, when Lang took the role of Gilbert Blythe in a high-school production of Anne of Green Gables, getting her first chance to wear men's clothes in public. She formed country band The Reclines in 1981 (named after her heroine, natch), and they released one album in Canada before Lang signed to Sire Records and recorded her debut album, Angel With A Lariat, helped by her constant collaborator, Ben Mink.

TRADITIONAL country music fans initially shied away from the spiky-haired lady in the neat, tailored jacket, sticking to the safer territory of stetsons `n' denims, and Lang found herself marginalised with other "new country" acts like Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith. Nevertheless, albums like Shadowland and Absolute Torch And Twang gained her a loyal following of discerning fans who liked their country tinged with a bit of real passion and soul.

Lang's acceptance into the mainstream began when she won a Grammy in 1989 for her duet with Roy Orbison on Crying, and she was back on the podium the next year to collect Best Country Vocal Performance for Absolute Torch And Twang. When Ingenue was released in 1992, it finally broke down the fences between country and pop, and made Lang a lesbian superstar, a dyke icon with a voice to die for. The hit single, Constant Craving, encapsulated Lang's musical vision, where heart-rending desire meets divine release, and pain and pleasure perform a graceful, glorious pas-de-deux. She was here, she was queer, and the world swooned at her feet.

Looking back on the past 10 years, how different does Lang feel now from the young country girl with the sweet voice and Patsy Cline fixation?

"Well, the creative process is something that still interests me, and that is a necessity really. I think that my interest in the business has waned a bit. I'm not that interested so much in the celebrity or the media end of it. But I really do still love the creative process, and more than anything, I love singing in front of a live audience, so I guess I'm hooked."

Is the stage where the real k.d. Lang comes through?

"Well, probably the strongest part of me, although there's a lot of other parts to me and some of them don't include music at all. So, I would say probably the most prevalent part of me.

What about the lesbian part - has fame made you a reluctant heroine for gay girls? Are you always expected to play the role model?

"I think that, you know, I certainly feel a responsibility, but I also feel a sense of pride. And I think that I maintain that, before anything, I'm an artist, and being lesbian is a part of who I am. But an artist and a singer is foremostly who I am.

It must be quite a struggle to stop people from paying too much attention to the lesbian part and keep them focused on the musical part. "Well, I think that because gay issues are so topical right now, it's a little bit of a battle, but I think that that is temporary and hopefully that music will prevail."