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LULU – Lou Reed & Metallica (Warner)
If Lou Reed's "Lulu" album was a drunk that cornered you for an hour at your local pub, you'd be found in the beer garden out the back, dangling from a rope. "Lulu" is not only intensely depressing in its ham-fisted attempts to shock, it's repetitively so. Is that the door to the library I see open? Great, I hope the handgun is inside and it's loaded.
Lou Reed's long been acclaimed as an artist ahead of his time. Not on this occasion. He missed the boat by a few years because the CIA should have been using "Lulu" to extract confessions out of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It would have been far more cruel than waterboarding and a helluva lot more effective.
The old leathery guy and the World's Biggest Metal band are unlikely companions and most of the pre-release media coverage has fixated on this, so let's move on. Once you get past the novelty factor, "Lulu" (unsurprisingly) sounds like Loud Reed in front of a slightly under-rehearsed Metallica. There's dissonance, violins and white noise leaking all over the place; Metallica sometimes lock into their stock-in-trade of crunching riffs but mostly go looking for a song to play. These are jams rather than fully-formed tunes and, by god, they go on far too long for their own good.
Lyrically, Lou is on familiar ground. No-one becomes one of their own characters so well (and we won't get into the hoary argument about where Lou Reed ends and the subjects begin.) So Lou's characters variously want to fuck/be hookers ("Little Dog"), become/degrade "sperm-less girls" and hate/love someone's guts while simultaneously marrying/killing them. A synopsis might have come in handy, but are we so dumb we need the same lyric chanted ("Cheat on me") 156 times? Yes, croaks Reed. These songs are either self-obsessed, self-indulgent or both.
Being a past master of "fuck you" moments like "Metal Machine Music" is one thing. Recruiting a major label band to enjoin you in dropping your pants in front of your, and their, fans and baring your inner (arse)-soul is another. It would have been much more effective if Lou had sounded interested.
"Lulu" is a concept album. How I hate that fucking term. It's the story, set to music, from two plays about an obscure German hooker who was tortured. The world has two plays about that and we need a double CD album, right? Listen and you'll truly know how Lulu felt. The cover shows the unlucky thespian with her arms amputated. You'll wish you'd lopped off your own ears, even if Picasso got there first. It's that dire.
Many, if not most, of these songs are laughable – and that's down to the lead singer. "Pumping Blood" features a shambling across-the-meter vocal that sounds like a mash-up from another song. OK, "Brandenberg Gate," apart from lyrical cringe, it's not a bad tune. But look at the company it keeps. If "Mistress Dread" is a mean slice of speedcore, the likes of which Lou's never touched before, the closing "Junior Dad" (clocking in at just under 20 minutes) will test the patience of anyone who isn't nodding off on smack.
Before You Accuse Me, I have every Reed solo album known to man, opportunistic compilations and "Metal Machine Music" excepted. I've endured some patchy Lou ("The Bells", anyone?) and with the exclusion of the aforementioned "MMM", this is so far up its own arse as an album that it could brush its own teeth from the inside. In short, "Lulu" is a bloated sack of shit. That's it for its good points. It's the sound of extreme ugliness – and that's before Metallica plays a note. If the album had a face it'd look like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. From the opening lines about Lou/Lulu getting his (her?) tits cut off it's a downhill race. Who cares who made it first to the bottom first? - The Barman
No bottles. Not one.
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ANIMAL
SERENADE – Lou Reed (Sire/Reprise)
The
best live shows usually contain some transcendent moment that burns the gig’s
memory deep in your mind and reminds you why you loved rock and roll in the
first place. Lou Reed’s tour de force
at the State Theatre in Sydney on September 4, 2003 contained two such efforts
- and they’re replicated here on this double CD set.
Bringing a stripped-down, drummerless band (save for electronic traps sporadically
manned by bass player Fernando Saunders), the most recent Loud Reed Band dipped
into their namesake’s entire back catalogue. The high points (for me)
were two old tunes. Wrap an ear around the cello (yes, cello) solo from Jane
Scapantoni on “Venus in Furs”. The demure young lady summons up
some unearthly noise. It’s proof, if needed, that one-person string sections
can rock out, and a reminder that the Velvet Underground really did lose a
significant part of its being when John Cale was pushed out, all those years
ago.
Defining Moment Number Two was the vocal from enigmatic back-up singer Antony
(no surname) on “Candy Says”, another Velvets tune that was arguably
never given the treatment it was quietly pleading for when first committed
to tape. Now, Antony had a strange stage presence; a receding blond bloke,
positively hulking compared to Lou, he spent most of the show seated at stage
left. But when he applies his unearthly soprano to a song as transparent and
delicate as “Candy Says”, all purity and perfect pitch, he fills
the whole auditorium (or lounge room, if you’re listening at home).
There are plenty more defining moments on “Animal Serenade”, and
some great ensemble playing. (The disc’s standout Lou on Guitar moment,
by the way, is the solo on “Ecstasy”, though I seem to recall the
one he pulled out in Sydney last year was more extreme). The truly great backing
band (Scarpantoni, master bassist Fernando Saunders and Lou’s ex-brother-in-law
Mick Rathke on guitar) plays with an intensity borne out of knowing each other
extremely well. They move effortlessly between instruments (guitar synthesizer
deputising for keyboards) and feels. As far as live albums go, this is a mirror
image of the guitar bluster and muscle of” Rock and Roll Animal”,
but in many ways is just as powerful.
Don’t worry that the song selection is a similar exercise in indulgence
to the last (double) Lou set “The Raven”. The spoken word piece
by the same name makes the cut, but there’s a heavy reliance on Velvets
songs with the odd ‘80s tune thrown in. (Saunders’ own delicate
composition, “Revien Cherie”, is a surprise inclusion, given Reed’s
reputation for complete control). No “Wild Side” or even “Perfect
Day” (the latter would have been killer, in the hands of this band),
so I suppose that cuts out the crowd in search of (another) Greatest Hits
package. I’m still not comfortable with “All Tomorrow’s Parties”
as a funked-up caricature but you can’t have everything. The presence
of “Street Hassle”, done well, is enough compensation.
Recorded at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theatre, three months before their Australian
visit, this is pretty much the band’s tour set, in running order. While
there was a sneaking worry that a lack of spontaneity might make the band
stale, it’s not apparent. It’s also beautifully recorded and mixed.
(What Lou album isn’t these days? He truly is Master of his Recording
Domain).
Just when you thought Lou had run out of things to say (or ways to say them).
– The Barman
1/2
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