Lou Reed - The Hi-Res Album Collection (1972-2000) [Official Digital Download]

Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was the guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, and his solo career spanned five decades. Rolling Stone magazine voted Reed's 1989 "New York" album the 19th best of the 1980s. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time included two albums by Reed as a solo artist: "Transformer" and "Berlin". This Collection brings together remastered anthology of groundbreaking studio and live album titles written, recorded by Reed as a solo artist following the 1970 dissolution of the Velvet Underground.



Lou Reed's eponymous debut solo album was released in 1972 and produced by Richard Robinson. It was released in 1972 by RCA Records two years after he left The Velvet Underground. The album comprises eight new recordings of then-unreleased Velvet Underground songs, plus two new songs, "Going Down" and "Berlin" (the latter was re-recorded by Reed as the title track for his 1973 album Berlin). With increasing interest in the Velvet Underground, Reed's debut album was highly anticipated, but the result was a commercial and critical disappointment, peaking at only number 189 on the Billboard 200.

Nearly 30 years after it came out, Lou Reed's solo debut suggests that neither Reed nor his new record company were quite sure about what to do with him in 1972. It would be years before the cult of the Velvet Underground became big enough to mean anything commercially, leaving Lou pretty much back where he started from in the public eye after five years of hard work, and he seemed to be searching for a different musical direction on this set without quite deciding what it would be; while the best tunes are admirably lean, no-frills rock & roll, there are also several featuring tricked-up arrangements that don't suit the material terribly well (at no other time in history would anyone believe that Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman would be a good choice as backing musicians for the guy who wrote "Sister Ray"). Lou also didn't appear to have done much songwriting since he left the Velvets in 1970; with the exception of the hilariously catty "Wild Child" and "Berlin," a song Reed would revisit a few years later, nearly every significant song on Lou Reed dated back to his tenure with the Velvet Underground, though it would be years before that band's recordings of "I Can't Stand It," "Lisa Says," or "Ocean" would surface. On its own terms, Lou Reed isn't a bad album, but it isn't a terribly interesting one either, and since superior performances of most of these songs are available elsewhere, it stands today more as a historical curiosity than anything else.

Tracklist:

01 - I Can't Stand It
02 - Going Down
03 - Walk and Talk It
04 - Lisa Says
05 - Berlin
06 - I Love You
07 - Wild Child
08 - Love Makes You Feel
09 - Ride Into The Sun
10 - Ocean




Released in 1972, Transformer is Lou Reed's second studio album. It was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson and was ranked number 194 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

David Bowie has never been shy about acknowledging his influences, and since the boho decadence and sexual ambiguity of the Velvet Underground's music had a major impact on Bowie's work, it was only fitting that as Ziggy Stardust mania was reaching its peak, Bowie would offer Lou Reed some much needed help with his career, which was stuck in neutral after his first solo album came and went. Musically, Reed's work didn't have too much in common with the sonic bombast of the glam scene, but at least it was a place where his eccentricities could find a comfortable home, and on Transformer Bowie and his right-hand man, Mick Ronson, crafted a new sound for Reed that was better fitting (and more commercially astute) than the ambivalent tone of his first solo album. Ronson adds some guitar raunch to "Vicious" and "Hangin' Round" that's a lot flashier than what Reed cranked out with the Velvets, but still honors Lou's strengths in guitar-driven hard rock, while the imaginative arrangements Ronson cooked up for "Perfect Day," "Walk on the Wild Side," and "Goodnight Ladies" blend pop polish with musical thinking just as distinctive as Reed's lyrical conceits. And while Reed occasionally overplays his hand in writing stuff he figured the glam kids wanted ("Make Up" and "I'm So Free" being the most obvious examples), "Perfect Day," "Walk on the Wild Side," and "New York Telephone Conversation" proved he could still write about the demimonde with both perception and respect. The sound and style of Transformer would in many ways define Reed's career in the 1970s, and while it led him into a style that proved to be a dead end, you can't deny that Bowie and Ronson gave their hero a new lease on life – and a solid album in the bargain.

Tracklist:

01 - Vicious
02 - Andy's Chest
03 - Perfect Day
04 - Hangin' 'Round
05 - Walk on the Wild Side
06 - Make Up
07 - Satellite of Love
08 - Wagon Wheel
09 - New York Telephone Conversation
10 - I'm So Free
11 - Goodnight Ladies




Berlin was released in 1973 and is Lou Reed's third solo album. It was ranked #344 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2003. The album is formatted as a tragic rock opera and features heavy orchestral arrangements. The Rolling Stone Record Guide described the album as "grandiose, decadent", and finally "one of the most depressing records ever made, and oddly beautiful in its own awful way".

Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" were both major hits in 1972, to the surprise of both Lou Reed and the music industry, and with Reed suddenly a hot commodity, he used his newly won clout to make the most ambitious album of his career, Berlin. Berlin was the musical equivalent of a drug-addled kid set loose in a candy store; the album's songs, which form a loose story line about a doomed romance between two chemically fueled bohemians, were fleshed out with a huge, boomy production (Bob Ezrin at his most grandiose) and arrangements overloaded with guitars, keyboards, horns, strings, and any other kitchen sink that was handy (the session band included Jack Bruce, Steve Winwood, Aynsley Dunbar, and Tony Levin). And while Reed had often been accused of focusing on the dark side of life, he and Ezrin approached Berlin as their opportunity to make The Most Depressing Album of All Time, and they hardly missed a trick. This all seemed a bit much for an artist who made such superb use of the two-guitars/bass/drums lineup with the Velvet Underground, especially since Reed doesn't even play electric guitar on the album; the sheer size of Berlin ultimately overpowers both Reed and his material. But if Berlin is largely a failure of ambition, that sets it apart from the vast majority of Reed's lesser works; Lou's vocals are both precise and impassioned, and though a few of the songs are little more than sketches, the best – "How Do You Think It Feels," "Oh, Jim," "The Kids," and "Sad Song" – are powerful, bitter stuff. It's hard not to be impressed by Berlin, given the sheer scope of the project, but while it earns an A for effort, the actual execution merits more of a B-.

Tracklist:

01 - Berlin
02 - Lady Day
03 - Men of Good Fortune
04 - Caroline Says I
05 - How Do You Think It Feels
06 - Oh Jim
07 - Caroline Says II
08 - The Kids
09 - The Bed
10 - Sad Song




Rock 'n' Roll Animal was recorded at a live show on December 21, 1973 at Howard Stein's Academy of Music in New York City. Produced by Steve Katz and Lou Reed, the performance featured several Velvet Underground songs re-arranged into a powerful hard rock set. The album peaked at #45 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in 1974.

In 1974, after the commercial disaster of his album Berlin, Lou Reed needed a hit, and Rock N Roll Animal was a rare display of commercial acumen on his part, just the right album at just the right time. Recorded in concert with Reed's crack road band at the peak of their form, Rock N Roll Animal offered a set of his most anthemic songs (most dating from his days with the Velvet Underground) in arrangements that presented his lean, effective melodies and street-level lyrics in their most user-friendly form (or at least as user friendly as an album with a song called "Heroin" can get). Early-'70s arena rock bombast is often the order of the day, but guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter use their six-string muscle to lift these songs up, not weigh them down, and with Reed's passionate but controlled vocals riding over the top, "Sweet Jane," "White Light/White Heat," and "Rock 'n' Roll" finally sound like the radio hits they always should have been. Reed would rarely sound this commercial again, but Rock N Roll Animal proves he could please a crowd when he had to.

Tracklist:

01 - Intro / Sweet Jane
02 - Heroin
03 - White Light / White Heat
04 - Lady Day
05 - Rock 'N' Roll




"Metal Machine Music" was avant-garde for the time, more experimental rock noise and industrial sounds incorporated within the music. The album led Reed to include more experimental sounds in his later albums.

One would be hard-pressed to name a major artist who ever released an album as thoroughly alienating as Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music; at a time when noise rock and punk had yet to make their presence known, Reed released this 64-minute aural assault that offered up a densely layered soundscape constructed from feedback, distortion, and atonal guitar runs sped up or slowed down until they were all but unrecognizable. Metal Machine Music seems a bit less startling today, now that bands like Sonic Youth and the Boredoms have created some sort of context for it, but it hasn't gotten any more user friendly with time – while Thurston Moore may go nuts on his guitar like this for three or four minutes at a stretch, Metal Machine Music goes on and on and on for over an hour, pausing only for side breaks with no rhythms, melodies, or formal structures to buffer the onslaught. If you're brave enough to listen to the whole thing, it's hard not to marvel at the scope of Reed's obsession; it's obvious he spent a lot of time on these layered sheets of noise, and enthusiasts of the violent guitar freakout may find it pleasing in short bursts. But confronting Metal Machine Music from front to back in one sitting is an experience that's both brutal and numbing.

Tracklist:

01 - Metal Machine Music, Pt. 1
02 - Metal Machine Music, Pt. 2
03 - Metal Machine Music, Pt. 3
04 - Metal Machine Music, Pt. 4




Released in 1974, Sally Can't Dance is Lou Reed's fourth studio album and his highest-charting solo album of his career. It reached the Top 10 in the US, and elevated Reed's status as a star.

On the live album Rock N Roll Animal, Lou Reed showed he'd learned how to give his audience what they wanted, and do it well. Sally Can't Dance, on the other hand, was the polar opposite, a remarkably cynical album that pandered to the lowest common denominator of the market that had bought Transformer and Rock N Roll Animal, and didn't even do it with much flair. Reed's performances here are limited to vocals, except for some sloppy acoustic guitar on one track (this from the man who helped reinvent electric guitar with the Velvet Underground), and the sodden, overblown arrangements sink most of these tunes before they get past the first chorus; much of the time, Reed sounds like an afterthought on his own album. And while Reed's best songwriting ranks with the best rock of his generation, Sally Can't Dance is cluttered with throwaways that reach for the boho decadence of Transformer and come up empty (with special recognition going to the bizarre and truly puzzling "Animal Language"). Side two does offer two worthwhile songs: "Kill Your Sons," a powerful and deeply personal remembrance of Reed's bouts with shock treatment and brutal psychotherapy, which he would revisit in a much stronger performance on 1984's Live in Italy, and "Billy," a witty and surprisingly poignant remembrance of an old friend and how their paths in life diverged. But otherwise, Sally Can't Dance has the distinction of being the worst studio album of Reed's career; Metal Machine Music may have been a lot more annoying, but at least he was trying on that one.

Tracklist:

01 - Ride Sally Ride
02 - Animal Language
03 - Baby Face
04 - N.Y. Stars
05 - Kill Your Sons
06 - Ennui
07 - Sally Can't Dance
08 - Billy




Coney Island Baby is American musician Lou Reed's sixth studio album, originally released in 1976 by RCA. The record features single "She's My Best Friend" originally performed by Reed's rock band The Velvet Underground.

From 1972's Transformer onward, Lou Reed spent most of the '70s playing the druggy decadence card for all it was worth, with increasingly mixed results. But on 1976's Coney Island Baby, Reed's songwriting began to move into warmer, more compassionate territory, and the result was his most approachable album since Loaded. On most of the tracks, Reed stripped his band back down to guitar, bass, and drums, and the results were both leaner and a lot more comfortable than the leaden over-production of Sally Can't Dance or Berlin. "Crazy Feeling," "She's My Best Friend," and "Coney Island Baby" found Reed actually writing recognizable love songs for a change, and while Reed pursued his traditional interest in the underside of the hipster's life on "Charlie's Girl" and "Nobody's Business," he did so with a breezy, freewheeling air that was truly a relief after the lethargic tone of Sally Can't Dance. "Kicks" used an audio-tape collage to generate atmospheric tension that gave its tale of drugs and death a chilling quality that was far more effective than his usual blasé take on the subject, and "Coney Island Baby" was the polar opposite, a song about love and regret that was as sincere and heart-tugging as anything the man has ever recorded. Coney Island Baby sounds casual on the surface, but emotionally it's as compelling as anything Lou Reed released in the 1970s, and proved he could write about real people with recognizable emotions as well as anyone in rock music – something you might not have guessed from most of the solo albums that preceded it.

Tracklist:

01 - Crazy Feeling
02 - Charley's Girl
03 - She's My Best Friend
04 - Kicks
05 - A Gift
06 - Ooohhh Baby
07 - Nobody's Business
08 - Coney Island Baby




Rock and Roll Heart is Lou Reed's seventh record and his debut album release for Arista Records. The record features the title "A Sheltered Life" that was originally recorded as a demo by The Velvet Underground in 1967.

Rock and Roll Heart was Lou Reed's first album for Arista Records, and one senses that he wanted to come up with something saleable for his new sponsors. Uptempo numbers with pop hooks dominate the set, the 12 songs zip by in an efficient 38 minutes, and instead of Reed's trademark meditations on the dark side of life, the lyrics are (for the most part) lean bursts of verse and chorus, in which the artist sings the praises of good times in general and rock & roll in particular (then again, on "I Believe in Love," Reed pledges his allegiance to both "good time music" and "the iron cross," a bit of perversity to remind us whose album this is). But if Rock and Roll Heart sounds like "Lou Reed Lite," there are more than a few flashes of Reed's inarguable talent. His band is in fine form (especially Marty Fogel on sax and Michael Fonfara on keyboards). "Banging on My Drum" is a crunchy rocker that recalls his work with the Velvet Underground; "A Sheltered Life" is an amusing bit of VU archeology (the Velvets demoed the song, but this marked its first appearance on record); and the closer, "Temporary Thing," is a bitter, haunting narrative that foreshadows Reed's next album, the harrowing masterpiece Street Hassle.

Tracklist:

01 - I Believe In Love
02 - Banging On My Drum
03 - Follow The Leader
04 - You Wear It So Well
05 - Ladies Pay
06 - Rock And Roll Heart
07 - Chooser And The Chosen One
08 - Senselessly Cruel
09 - Claim To Fame
10 - Vicious Circle
11 - A Sheltered Life
12 - Temporary Thing




Street Hassle is Lou Reed's eighth solo album and the first pop album to use binaural recording technology. Produced by Lou Reed and Richard Robinson.

The rise of the punk/new wave movement in the late '70s proved just how pervasive Lou Reed's influence had been through the past decade, but it also gave him some stiff competition, as suddenly Reed was no longer the only poet of the New York streets. 1978's Street Hassle was Reed's first album after punk had gained public currency, and Reed appeared to have taken the minimal approach of punk to heart. With the exception of Metal Machine Music, Street Hassle was Reed's rawest set of the 1970s; partly recorded live, with arrangements stripped to the bone, Street Hassle was dark, deep, and ominous, a 180-degree turn from the polished neo-glam of Transformer. Lyrically, Street Hassle found Reed looking deep into himself, and not liking what he saw. Opening with an uncharitable parody of "Sweet Jane," Street Hassle found Reed acknowledging just how much a self-parody he'd become in the 1970s, and just how much he hated himself for it, on songs like "Dirt" and "Shooting Star." Street Hassle was Reed's most creatively ambitious album since Berlin, and it sounded revelatory on first release in 1978. Sadly, time has magnified its flaws; the Lenny Bruce-inspired "I Wanna Be Black" sounds like a bad idea today, and the murk of the album's binaural mix isn't especially flattering to anyone. But the album's best moments are genuinely exciting, and the title cut, a three-movement poetic tone poem about life on the New York streets, is one of the most audacious and deeply moving moments of Reed's solo career. Raw, wounded, and unapologetically difficult, Street Hassle isn't the masterpiece Reed was shooting for, but it's still among the most powerful and compelling albums he released during the 1970s, and too personal and affecting to ignore.

Tracklist:

01 - Gimmie Some Good Times
02 - Dirt
03 - Street Hassle
04 - I Wanna Be Black
05 - Real Good Time Together
06 - Shooting Star
07 - Leave Me Alone
08 - Wait




Released in 1978, Take No Prisoners is a live album by Lou Reed that was recorded at the Bottom Line in New York.

"I do Lou Reed better than anybody, so I thought I'd get in on it," Reed says at one point during this double live set, and that seems to sum up the album's theme quite well. Recorded during a week of shows at New York's Bottom Line in 1978, Live: Take No Prisoners presents Lou Reed the Standup Comic, doing schtick on Patti Smith ("F*ck Radio Ethiopia, man! I'm Radio Brooklyn!"), political activism ("Give me an issue, I'll give you a tissue, and you can wipe my ass with it"), and the agony of playing "Walk on the Wild Side" ("It's not that I don't want to play your favorites, but there are so many favorites to choose from!") while occasionally pausing to play a song. As a comic, Lou is no Lenny Bruce or Bill Hicks, but he's funny by fits and starts (and he plays guitar better than either of them). On the odd moments when Lou is focused enough to actually perform a song from start to finish (such as "Pale Blue Eyes" or "Coney Island Baby"), he's in fine form, sounding loose but enthusiastic, but those moments don't happen especially often, and this album plows through a mere ten songs in close to 100 minutes, which gives you an idea of just how far he stretches out here. If you're a fan who wants a look into the mind of Lou Reed, comic or otherwise, Live: Take No Prisoners certainly fills the bill, but if you want to hear Lou actually play his music, you're better off with Rock N Roll Animal or Live in Italy. But then again, as Lou himself points out, "What's wrong with cheap dirty jokes? I never said I was tasteful".

Tracklist:

01 - Sweet Jane
02 - I Wanna Be Black
03 - Satellite Of Love
04 - Pale Blue Eyes
05 - Berlin
06 - I'm Waiting For The Man
07 - Coney Island Baby
08 - Street Hassle
09 - Walk On The Wild Side
10 - Leave Me Alone




The Bells is the ninth album by Lou Reed, released through Arista Records in 1979. It is recorded in binaural sound.

After the harrowing triumph of Street Hassle, Lou Reed's The Bells sounded like a bit of a step back; it returned Reed to the more listener-friendly, keyboard-dominated sound of Rock and Roll Heart, the lyrics lacked the caustic self-loathing of songs like "Dirt" or "I Wanna Be Black," and it even featured a four-and-a-half-minute funk workout called "Disco Mystic" (hey, this was 1979). But lyrically, The Bells found Reed moving away from the boho decadence of most of his 1970s work and toward a more compassionate perspective on his characters; "Families" and "All Through the Night" display an empathy and emotional depth Reed didn't often allow himself as a solo artist, and "Stupid Man" and "Looking for Love" rocked hard while making the loneliness of their protagonists felt. And the title cut, with Reed experimenting with a guitar synthesizer and free jazz hero Don Cherry inviting the spirit on trumpet, is both a brave exploration of musical space and a lyrically touching sketch of loss and salvation. An album that's worn well over time, The Bells gains depth with each playing and now sounds like one of Reed's finest solo efforts of the 1970s.

Tracklist:

01 - Stupid Man
02 - Disco Mystic
03 - I Want to Boogie with You
04 - With You
05 - Looking for Love
06 - City Lights
07 - All through the Night
08 - Families
09 - The Bells

Growing Up in Public was a transitional album for Lou Reed; it was his last set with his long-running road band (dominated by keyboardist Michael Fonfara), and while the fleshed-out arrangements are of a piece with Reed's work on Rock & Roll Heart and The Bells, the lyrics of the best songs anticipate the directly personal, emotionally naked songwriting that marked the two extraordinary albums that would follow, The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts. "How Do You Speak to an Angel," "My Old Man," and "Standing on Ceremony" deal with Reed's family issues with a direct force he hadn't summoned since "Kill Your Sons" (we'll leave it to others to debate their accuracy), and "So Alone" and "Keep Away" both offer a trenchant but heart-rending look at modern relationships. And "The Power of Positive Drinking" is amusing, but rather surprising coming from a guy who would give up alcohol and drugs a year after this was released. Growing Up in Public didn't get much notice on its initial release, but all these years later it sounds like a dry run for what was to be the most creatively fruitful period of Lou Reed's solo career.

Tracklist:

01 - How Do You Speak To An Angel
02 - My Old Man
03 - Keep Away
04 - Growing Up In Public
05 - Standing On Ceremony
06 - So Alone
07 - Love Is Here To Stay
08 - The Power Of Positive Drinking
09 - Smiles
10 - Think It Over
11 - Teach The Gifted Children




The Blue Mask is the eleventh studio album by singer-songwriter Lou Reed. It was the first album released after Reed left Arista Records and returned to RCA Records. It returns to the stripped-down sound of his previous group, the Velvet Underground, with only guitars, bass and drums. It also follows the Velvet Underground stylistically by counterpointing and transposing jarring feedback-driven rock with tough and tender ballads, melodic distortion of a magnitude not heard since the "Sister Ray" days.

In 1982, 12 years after he left the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed released The Blue Mask, the first album where he lived up to the potential he displayed in the most groundbreaking of all American rock bands. The Blue Mask was Reed's first album after he overcame a long-standing addiction to alcohol and drugs, and it reveals a renewed focus and dedication to craft – for the first time in years, Reed had written an entire album's worth of moving, compelling songs, and was performing them with keen skill and genuine emotional commitment. Reed was also playing electric guitar again, and with the edgy genius he summoned up on White Light/White Heat. Just as importantly, he brought Robert Quine on board as his second guitarist, giving Reed a worthy foil who at once brought great musical ideas to the table, and encouraged the bandleader to make the most of his own guitar work. (Reed also got superb support from his rhythm section, bassist extraordinaire Fernando Saunders and ace drummer Doane Perry). As Reed stripped his band back to a muscular two-guitars/bass/drums format, he also shed the faux-decadent "Rock N Roll Animal" persona that had dominated his solo work and wrote clearly and fearlessly of his life, his thoughts, and his fears, performing the songs with supreme authority whether he was playing with quiet subtlety (such as the lovely "My House" or the unnerving "The Gun") or cranked-to-ten fury (the paranoid "Waves of Fear" and the emotionally devastating title cut). Intelligent, passionate, literate, mature, and thoroughly heartfelt, The Blue Mask was everything Reed's fans had been looking for in his work for years, and it's vivid proof that for some rockers, life can begin on the far side of 35.

Tracklist:

01 - My House
02 - Women
03 - Underneath the Bottle
04 - The Gun
05 - The Blue Mask
06 - Average Guy
07 - The Heroine
08 - Waves of Fear
09 - The Day John Kennedy Died
10 - Heavenly Arms




Released in March 1983, Legendary Hearts was dedicated to Lou Reed's then wife, Sylvia, who also created the concept for the album's cover.

If Legendary Hearts seemed like a disappointment in 1983, that was largely because the year before Lou Reed had released The Blue Mask, one of the finest albums of his career, and Legendary Hearts just wasn't quite as good. But pull it off the shelf today, give it a listen, and Legendary Hearts easily shuts down nearly anything Reed released in the 1970s; if it's a less obvious masterpiece than The Blue Mask, it makes clear that Reed was once again in firm command of his strengths, and making the most of them in the studio. Guitarist Robert Quine and bassist Fernando Saunders were both back on board from The Blue Mask, and they reaffirmed their status as the linchpins of the strongest band of Reed's solo career, and drummer Fred Maher rocked harder (and with fewer frills) than Doane Perry. The bracing cross-talk of Reed's and Quine's guitars had lost nothing in the year separating the two albums, and if Reed didn't seem to be aiming quite as high as a songwriter this time out, most of the tracks were every bit as intelligent and soul-searching as The Blue Mask's lineup; if there were a few moments of comic relief, like "Don't Talk to Me About Work" and "Pow Wow," no one could argue that Reed hadn't earned a few laughs after songs like "Make Up Mind," "The Last Shot," and "Betrayed." On Legendary Hearts, Reed was writing great songs, playing them with enthusiasm and imagination, and singing them with all his heart and soul, and if it wasn't his best album, it was more than good enough to confirm that the brilliance of The Blue Mask was no fluke, and that Reed had reestablished himself as one of the most important artists in American rock.

Tracklist:

01 - Legendary Hearts
02 - Don't Talk To Me About Work
03 - Make Up Mind
04 - Martial Law
05 - The Last Shot
06 - Turn Out The Light
07 - Pow Wow
08 - Betrayed
09 - Bottoming Out
10 - Home Of The Brave
11 - Rooftop Garden




New Sensations is the thirteenth solo album by Lou Reed. When this album was released, critics and listeners alike took note of a change in the songs as being more upbeat and fun than much of Reed's prior work.

Lou Reed never struck anyone as one of the happiest guys in rock & roll, so some fans were taken aback when his 1984 album New Sensations kicked off with "I Love You, Suzanne," a catchy up-tempo rocker that sounded a lot like a pop tune. After reaffirming his status as one of rock's greatest poets with The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, what was Reed doing here? Lou was having a great time, and his pleasure was infectious – New Sensations is a set of straight-ahead rock & roll that ranks with the most purely enjoyable albums of Lou's career. Reed opted not to work with guitarist Robert Quine this time out, instead overdubbing rhythm lines over his own leads, and if the guitars don't cut quite as deep, they're still wiry and in the pocket throughout, and the rhythm section of Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher rocks hard with a tough, sinewy groove. And while much of New Sensations finds Reed in a surprisingly optimistic mood, this isn't "Don't Worry, Be Happy" by any stretch of the imagination. On "Endlessly Jealous," "My Friend George," and "Fly Into the Sun," Reed makes it clear that happiness can be a hard-won commodity, and when Reed embraces life's pleasures on "Turn to Me" and "New Sensations," he does so with a fierce joy that's realistic, unblinking, and deeply felt, like a man whose signed on for the full ride and is going to enjoy the good times while they last. Like Coney Island Baby, New Sensations showed that Reed had a lot more warmth and humanity than he was given credit for, and made clear that he could "write happy" when he felt like, with all the impact of his "serious" material.

Tracklist:

01 - I Love You, Suzanne
02 - Endlessly Jealous
03 - My Red Joystick
04 - Turn To Me
05 - New Sensations
06 - Doin' The Things That We Want To
07 - What Becomes A Legend Most
08 - Fly Into The Sun
09 - My Friend George
10 - High In The City
11 - The Great Defender (Down At The Arcade)




Between 1982 and 1984, Lou Reed put together the best band of his solo career, recorded three superb albums, and left behind a fine live double after two rapturously received world tours – not a bad track record from a guy who had been so inconsistent throughout the 1970s. One might well have argued that Lou was due for a disappointment, and Mistrial certainly filled that bill.

On Mistrial, Reed opted to handle both lead and rhythm guitar parts as he had on New Sensations, but with a few shades less precision, and while Fernando Saunders once again did yeoman work as a bassist, as a co-producer he didn't fill out Reed's sound especially well. The decision to use a drum machine on most of these tracks gives the album a stiff feeling, and a texture that captures what was least fortunate about '80s rock, but most importantly Reed didn't have an album's worth of top-shelf songs on tap. "No Money Down" and "Tell It to Your Heart" are smart and funny sketches on the difficult art of romance, while "Mama's Got a Lover" is an unexpectedly sweet character study and "The Original Wrapper" is a game stab at hip-hop from a 44-year-old white guy. But "Outside" and "Spit It Out" are just filler, and "Video Violence" is a pretty strange attack on the media from a guy who tried to bring the mindset of William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr. to rock & roll. Mistrial wasn't one of Reed's worst albums (it's hard to imagine Sally Can't Dance ever being deprived of that honor), but it certainly lowered his batting average as he seemed to be on a hot streak – as if his longtime fans needed to be reminded that he was fallible.

Tracklist:

01 - Mistrial
02 - No Money Down
03 - Outside
04 - Don't Hurt A Woman
05 - Video Violence
06 - Spit It Out
07 - The Original Wrapper
08 - Mama's Got A Lover
09 - I Remember You
10 - Tell It To Your Heart

New York City figured so prominently in Lou Reed's music for so long that it's surprising it took him until 1989 to make an album simply called New York, a set of 14 scenes and sketches that represents the strongest, best-realized set of songs of Reed's solo career. While Reed's 1982 comeback, The Blue Mask, sometimes found him reaching for effects, New York's accumulated details and deft caricatures hit bull's-eye after bull's-eye for 57 minutes, and do so with an easy stride and striking lyrical facility. New York also found Reed writing about the larger world rather than personal concerns for a change, and in the beautiful, decaying heart of New York City, he found plenty to talk about – the devastating impact of AIDS in "Halloween Parade," the vicious circle of child abuse "Endless Cycle," the plight of the homeless in "Xmas in February" – and even on the songs where he pointedly mounts a soapbox, Reed does so with an intelligence and smart-assed wit that makes him sound opinionated rather than preachy – like a New Yorker. And when Reed does look into his own life, it's with humor and perception; "Beginning of a Great Adventure" is a hilarious meditation on the possibilities of parenthood, and "Dime Store Mystery" is a moving elegy to his former patron Andy Warhol. Reed also unveiled a new band on this set, and while guitarist Mike Rathke didn't challenge Reed the way Robert Quine did, Reed wasn't needing much prodding to play at the peak of his form, and Ron Wasserman proved Reed's superb taste in bass players had not failed him. Produced with subtle intelligence and a minimum of flash, New York is a masterpiece of literate, adult rock & roll, and the finest album of Reed's solo career.

Tracklist:

01 - Romeo Had Juliette
02 - Halloween Parade
03 - Dirty Blvd.
04 - Endless Cycle
05 - There Is No Time
06 - Last Great American Whale
07 - Beginning of a Great Adventure
08 - Busload of Faith
09 - Sick of You
10 - Hold On
11 - Good Evening Mr. Waldheim
12 - Xmas in February
13 - Strawman
14 - Dime Store Mystery

John Cale, the co-founder of The Velvet Underground, left the group in 1968 after tensions between himself and Lou Reed became intolerable; neither had much charitable to say about one other after that, and they seemed to share only one significant area of agreement – they both maintained a great respect and admiration for Andy Warhol, the artist whose patronage of the group helped them reach their first significant audience. So it was fitting that after Warhol's death in 1987, Reed and Cale began working together for the first time since White Light/White Heat on a cycle of songs about the artist's life and times. Starkly constructed around Cale's keyboards, Reed's guitar, and their voices, Songs for Drella is a performance piece about Andy Warhol, his rise to fame, and his troubled years in the limelight. Reed and Cale take turns on vocals, sometimes singing as the character of Andy and elsewhere offering their observations on the man they knew. On a roll after New York, Reed's songs are strong and pithy, and display a great feel for the character of Andy, and while Cale brought fewer tunes to the table, they're all superb, especially "Style It Takes" and "A Dream," a spoken word piece inspired by Warhol's posthumously published diaries. If Songs for Drella seems modest from a musical standpoint, it's likely neither Reed nor Cale wanted the music to distract from their story, and here they paint a portrait of Warhol that has far more depth and poignancy than his public image would have led one to expect. It's a moving and deeply felt tribute to a misunderstood man, and it's a pleasure to hear these two comrades-in-arms working together again, even if their renewed collaboration was destined to be short-lived.

Tracklist:

01 - Smalltown
02 - Open House
03 - Style it Takes
04 - Work
05 - Trouble with Classicists
06 - Starlight
07 - Faces and Names
08 - Images
09 - Slip Away (A Warning)
10 - It Wasn't Me
11 - I Believe
12 - Nobody But You
13 - A Dream
14 - Forever Changed
15 - Hello It's Me

With 1982's The Blue Mask, Lou Reed began approaching more mature and challenging themes in his music, and in 1992, Reed decided it was time to tackle the Most Serious Theme of All – Death. Reed lost two close friends to cancer within the space of a year, and the experience informed Magic and Loss, a set of 14 songs about loss, illness, and mortality. It would have been easy for a project like this to sound morbid, but Reed avoids that; the emotions that dominate these songs are fear and helplessness in the face of a disease (and a fate) not fully understood, and Reed's songs struggle to balance these anxieties with bravery, humor, and an understanding of the notion that death is an inevitable part of life – that you can't have the magic without the loss. It's obvious that Reed worked on this material with great care, and Magic and Loss contains some of his most intelligent and emotionally intense work as a lyricist. However, Reed hits many of the same themes over and over again, and while Reed and his accompanists – guitarist Mike Rathke, bassist Rob Wasserman, and percussionist Michael Blair – approach the music with skill and impeccable chops, many of these songs are a bit samey; the album's most memorable tunes are the ones that pull it out of its mid-tempo rut, like the grooving "What's Good" and the guitar workout "Gassed and Stoked." Magic and Loss is an intensely heartfelt piece of music, possessing a taste and subtlety one might never have expected from Reed, but its good taste almost works against it; it's a sincere bit of public mourning, but perhaps a more rousing wake might have been a more meaningful tribute to the departed.

Tracklist:

01 - Dorita - The Spirit
02 - What's Good - The Thesis
03 - Power and Glory - The Situation
04 - Magician - Internally
05 - Sword of Damocles - Externally
06 - Goodby Mass - In a Chapel Bodily Termination
07 - Cremation - Ashes to Ashes
08 - Dreamin' - Escape
09 - No Chance - Regret
10 - Warrior King - Revenge
11 - Harry's Circumcision - Reverie Gone Astray
12 - Gassed and Stoked - Loss
13 - Power and Glory Part II - Magic - Transformation
14 - Magic and Loss - The Summation

After contemplating the decline of New York City, the passing of his mentor Andy Warhol, his place in (perhaps) the greatest American rock band of all time, and the very nature of life and death, in 1996 Lou Reed finally began to consider a really important subject – where to get a good chocolate egg cream. "Egg Cream" kicked off Set the Twilight Reeling, and for many fans it was a kick to hear Reed cranking up his amps and having some fun again, but much of the rest of the album turned out not to be as lightweight as the opener would have led you to expect. On Set the Twilight Reeling, Reed is preoccupied with relationships, as he tries to figure if he wants a long-term commitment ("Trade In"), if he's better off as a lone wolf ("NYC Man"), if he's in love ("The Proposition"), or if he just wants to fool around ("Hookywooky"). Reed rocks a lot harder here than on the two albums that preceded it (and plays plenty of great crunchy guitar), but much of the album is set in a mellow mid-tempo groove that's casual and comfortable but not especially compelling. And while "Sex With Your Parents (Motherfucker), Pt. II" is an amusing attack on conservative politicians, his logic isn't exactly clear. Longtime fans are no doubt grateful that Reed's relatively unfocused and unsubstantial albums these days are such a vast improvement over his fallow period in the 1970s, but for the most part Set the Twilight Reeling sounds like a standard issue 1990s Lou Reed album – smart, well-crafted, with plenty of guitar, but nothing terribly special, either.

Tracklist:

01 - Egg Cream
02 - NYC Man
03 - Finish Line
04 - Trade In
05 - Hang On to Your Emotions
06 - Sex with Your Parents (Motherfucker) Part II
07 - Hookywooky
08 - The Proposition
09 - Adventurer
10 - Riptide
11 - Set the Twilight Reeling

Never let it be said that Lou Reed has lost the ability to surprise his audience; who would have thought that at the age of 58, on his first album of the new millennium, Reed would offer us an 18-minute guitar distortion workout with lyrics abut kinky sex, dangerous drugs, and (here's the surprise) imagining what it would be like to be a possum? For the most part, Ecstasy finds Reed obsessed with love and sex, though (as you might expect) his take on romance is hardly rosy ("Paranoia Key of E," "Mad," and "Tatters" all document a relationship at the point of collapse, while "Baton Rouge" is an eccentric but moving elegy for a love that didn't last) and Eros is usually messy ("White Prism"), obsessive ("Ecstasy"), or unhealthy and perverse ("Rock Minuet"). Reed genuinely seems to be stretching towards new lyrical and musical ground here, but while some of his experiments work, several pointedly do not, with the epic "Like a Possum" only the album's most spectacular miscalculation. Still, Reed and producer Hal Wilner take some chances with the arrangements that pay off, particularly the subtle horn charts that dot several songs, and Reed's superb rhythm section (Fernando Saunders on bass and Tony "Thunder" Smith on drums) gives these songs a rock-solid foundation for the leader's guitar workouts. As Reed and his band hit fifth gear on the album's rousing closer, "Big Sky," he once again proves that even his uneven works include a few songs you'll certainly want to have in your collection – as long as they're not about possums.

Tracklist:

01 - Paranoia Key of E
02 - Mystic Child
03 - Mad
04 - Ecstasy
05 - Modern Dance
06 - Tatters
07 - Future Farmers of America
08 - Turning Time Around
09 - White Prism
10 - Rock Minuet
11 - Baton Rouge
12 - Like a Possum
13 - Rouge
14 - Big Sky


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