Lou Reed

One of many creative rebirths for Lou. A clean and sober Reed wrote a superb collection of narratives, then drafted art-punk guitarist Robert Quine and mind-blowing bassist Fernando Saunders for one of his best albums. The title track may be the darkest, most twisted number in Reed's arsenal (and that's saying something), but the rest brim over with a rare compassion.

Lou Reed's the Blue Mask is a great record, and its genius is at once so simple and unusual
that the only appropriate reaction is wonder. Who expected anything like this from Reed
at this late stage of the game? Even though the Velvet Underground, as critic Lester Bangs
once remarked, "invented the Seventies," Reed had as much trouble as anyone else in
trying to navigate the decade's actuality. By its end, he seemed to have just abo... More >

After this becomes a cult classic, in a week or so, noncultists are gonna start complaining. "My Dedalus to your Bloom/Was such a perfect wit"? And then bringing in "perfect" again for a rhyme? What kind of "spirit of pure poetry" is that? One that honors the way people really talk. Never has Lou sounded more Ginsbergian, more let-it-all-hang-out than on this, his most controlled, plainspoken, deeply felt, and uninhibited album. Even his unnecessarily ideological heterosexuality is more an expression of mood than a statement of policy; he sounds glad to be alive, so that horror and pain become occasions for courage and eloquence as well as bitterness and sarcasm. Every song comes at the world from a slightly different angle, and every one makes the others stronger. Reed's voice--precise, conversational, stirring whether offhand or inspirational--sings his love of language itself, with Fernando Saunders's bass articulating his tenderness and the guitars of Robert Quine and Reed himself slashing out with an anger he understands better all the time. (Grade - A)