153. The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground (March 1969)

 

1. Candy Says*

2. What Goes On

3. Some Kinda Love

4. Pale Blue Eyes*

5. Jesus

6. Beginning to See the Light

7. I'm Set Free

8. That's the Story of My Life

9. The Murder Mystery

10. After Hours*

****1/2

If you're the sort of person who believes in "bests" then this probably isn't the best Velvet Underground album. The mix of in-your-face experimentalism with classic pop on ...& Nico, and the pure aural insanity of White Light/White Heat, tend to attract a lot more attention. Loaded, on the other hand, is just so damned accessible - I mean, it has "Rock & Roll" and "Sweet Jane" on it! But the older I get, the more I like The Velvet Underground best. Reed and co knuckled down and tried to write an album of commercial pop rock while still retaining the experimentalism of their earlier work. The result is an album of mostly clean guitars, containing mellow rockers and gentle ballads, where the sonic freak outs of the first two albums are twisted into more conventional song structures. It's an astonishing and truly ground-breaking album, but in a very understated and amiable way. The odd rhythms are still there, but slowed down and used to anchor beautiful melodies. The guitars are still weird and innovative, but they twist and wind around one another rather than bludgeoning you with white noise. And the lyrics are some of the best Reed ever wrote. "Candy Says" is a heart-breaking song from the perspective of a transitioning transsexual, and I kind of agree with Reed that it's probably the best song he ever wrote. "Pale Blue Eyes", another of my very favourites, is an incredibly mature love song about adultery and learning to accept that you can't always hold on to the one you love. And "After Hours", featuring the fragile, childlike vocals of drummer Moe Tucker, is the perfect closer - a 1920s-tinged number about turning away from the world and finding solace in isolation, even as you come to terms with the fact that it's really not what you want.

The only real misstep on the album is "The Murder Mystery". Reed claimed that it was positioned there as a cold rebuff to the story of personal growth told by the preceding eight songs. Personally, though, it just kind of sounds like an attempt to out-weird John Cale, who had left the group acrimoniously prior to the album. I mean, this song has a cool riff, and at first it's kind of fun in a "what the hell am I listening to?" kind of way, but it goes on far too long and getting to the end is something of a chore. Unsurprisingly, Reed himself apparently considered it kind of a failure. It serves its purpose on the album thematically, I suppose, and makes the appearance of "After Hours" twice as welcome, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. 

So yeah. Maybe they released "better" albums, but if I could only keep one it would probably be this.