1. Sunday Morning
2. I'm Waiting for the Man*
3. Femme Fatale*
4. Venus in Furs
5. Run, Run, Run
6. All Tomorrow's Parties
7. Heroin*
8. There She Goes Again
9. I'll Be Your Mirror
10. The Black Angel's Death Song
11. European Son
A+
What the hell can I say about this album that hasn't already been said? Then again, I tackled the Beatles, so I guess I can tackle this.
I first heard the Velvet Underground during the gap year I took after high school. Unable to find a job for quite a while, I spent a lot of time sitting around at home reading and listening to Triple J (N.B.- this was back before Triple J sucked). On one of the morning shows, I heard a reference to the Velvet Underground. I'd never heard of them, but the presenters said they were important, and the name was mysterious and cool. So I trotted off to the library, and borrowed a copy of the What Goes On box set. Suffice to say I was not prepared for what awaited me. True, I was familiar with a lot of VU-derived music, but the rawness and strangeness of the songs, the droning guitars and unhinged ventures into noise, were something I was wholly unprepared for. And then of course what do you make of a band that can produce both "Heroin" and "After Hours"? And bear in mind that at the time I was staunchly anti-drugs, anti-alcohol, and anti-smoking. Still, I found I loved it. I am a walking contradiction.
Of course as a friendless loser in a provincial town, I didn't really know anyone else who liked the Velvet Underground, or had much time for real left-of-the-dial stuff at all. So imagine my surprised when I went to University, got to talking about music with a guy in my fine arts class, asked him if he liked the Velvet Underground, and his response was "Of course. Everyone does". No, guy from my art class 18 years ago, everyone does not love the Velvet Underground. Just ask my cousin, who made me turn White Light/White Heat off halfway through on the grounds that it was "really depressing". But then again, the other month I heard them playing "I'm Waiting for the Man" on Triple M. So I guess the world has changed a lot since my youth.
In any case, the Velvet Underground remain the quintessential cult band, even if that cult is truly enormous. And there's a simple reason for this - no matter how many people love "Sweet Jane" or "Stephanie Says", their first two album with John Cale are just fucking weird.
The album starts nicely enough, with "Sunday Morning" a very pretty song that lulls you into a false sense of security. But that said, it's a slightly queasy piece of music, replete with strange overdubs, a celeste, and Nico's deadpan backing vocals. The lyrics are also somewhat sinister, recounting waking up after a night of excess and facing the cold day. "Watch out! The world's behind you" indeed. It could almost be a warning about the next song, "I'm Waiting for the Man". We've had heavier music, but nothing this primal and strange, and the "day in the life of a junkie" lyrics coupled with the distorted two-chord stomp of the song add up to what is easily one of the most influential songs ever recorded. I mean, bands have built careers on ripping this song off. Without it, "Heroes" wouldn't exist. Hell, most punk music wouldn't exist.
"Femme Fatale" is another of Lou Reed's Factory songs, a story about a dangerous, but incredible inviting, woman. It's also quite pretty, and would be memorably covered by Big Star (a version arguably more influential than the original). "Venus in Furs", on the other hand, is really one of a kind. I mean, it's a blow-by-blow account of a man in love with a dominatrix, set to squalling drones, tribal drumming, and John Cale's screeching viola. There was literally nothing like it (that I'm aware of) at the time, and hasn't really been much since,
"Run, Run, Run" is a pretty minor song, a vaguely Stones-inspired rocker (as original as this album is in some respects, it owes a clear debt to both the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan). Things pick up with the chiming, epic "All Tomorrow's Parties", another song about the New York demi-monde, that owes a clear debt to modern classical and has a vaguely Eastern flavour, while recognisably inhabiting the confines of psychedelic rock. Nico gives a strong vocal, and it really sums-up the mix of experimentalism and immediacy that typifies this album.
The best song, to my mind, is "Heroin". Mo Tucker's tribal drumming, which clearly inspired a host of Krautrockers, underpins a reverb-drenched panegyric to the joys of dope. The line "I wish I was born a thousand years ago. I'd sail the darkened seas on a great big clipper ship" is one of those most evocative in rock, delivered with a sort of haunting resignation by Reed, and capturing the desire to escape in any way possible. The song also mimics the effects of drugs quite well, starting out slow and sinister and gradually building to a distorted roar.
Unfortunately, as with most LPs, the back half can't really match the front. "I'll Be Your Mirror" is another one of Reed's pretty love songs, and I like the violas in "Black Angel's Death Song". I also love how the album ends - "European Son" starts out as a demented riff of Bo Diddley featuring a killer walking bassline, and gradually dissolves into a nightmare of distortion and feedback as loud and crazy as anything to come before or after. But unfortunately side two also leans a bit more towards Reed's quasi-Dylanesque lyrics, and he's really a much better songwriter when he sticks to concrete subjects. That may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't much care.
So, Pitchfork listed this as the greatest album of the 1960s. If I'm being perfectly honest, I think Pet Sounds edges it out, just because all the songs on Pet Sounds are good, while this album has a couple of clunkers. But that said, it's pretty difficult to overstate the importance and influence of this album. It's fair to say most of the music I listen to wouldn't exist if this album had never been made. People have been twisting, distorting and reimaging these songs for almost sixty years now, and the best of them still have a frankness and vitality that's truly astonishing. I really wish I could go back and listen to these songs again for the first time, and do them justice. But then, I suppose this album has been something of a victim of its own success.
No comments:
Post a Comment