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Lou Reed - Berlin: Live At St. Ann's Warehouse
| Musicomh |
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A critical and commercial flop on its release in 1973, Berlin is now regarded as one of Lou Reed's finest achievements. Fans who had expected an upbeat, radio-friendly companion piece to Transformer had clearly underestimated Reed's indifference to his audience, and were rewarded instead with what Lester Bangs memorably called a "gargantuan slab of maggoty rancour that may well be the most depressed album ever." And that was one of the more positive reviews. Yet, the uncompromising bleakness masks some of Reed's best and most versatile songwriting. For the uninitiated, it's a coherent song cycle with a linear narrative (boy meets girl; boy and girl do lots of drugs; boy beats up girl; girl kills self) infused with a palpable sense of drama as Jim and Caroline's story unfolds. And it's these elements of oral storytelling and dramatic tension which give real purpose to the idea of staging Berlin in its entirety. Reed toured the album for the first time in 2006; this is the aural record to accompany the DVD of the New York shows....full text |
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| Prefixmag |
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In case you hadn’t noticed, Lou Reed has been working rather doggedly to solidify his standing as a solo elder statesmen of rock ‘n' roll, feverishly recontextualizing his earlier and fairly inconsistent solo work to exemplify what missunderstood masterpieces they are (or he takes them to be). And it would smack of depressing overcompensation and desperation for adulation if it weren't for the fact that he’s not entirely incorrect in doing so. The live double-disc from 2004, Animal Serenade, lent a harrowing and classicist dignity to 30 years' worth of solo material (along with some Velvets classics, natch). The rerelease in 2005 of a remastered Coney Island Baby (1975) reminded us that Reed was capable of not just replicating but equaling the warmth and empathy of the Velvets’ Loaded. And in 2007 he worked with the German music ensemble Zeitkratzer to recast the nerve-numbed static roar of Metal Machine Music with a classical orchestra. All were done, presumably, to show us that however heroin-shocked his body was and his popular legacy might be, when it come to what matters -- the songs -- he is unimpeachable. (Let’s all just pretend Sally Can’t Dance never happened, OK?)...full text |
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| Rollingstone |
| Upon the 1973 release of Berlin, a Rolling Stone critic deemed the record "patently offensive." Thirty years later, Lou Reed's concept album about speed freaks on a downward spiral of infidelity, spousal abuse, parental neglect and death ranked 344 on this magazine's 500 all-time-greatest-albums list. Reed has always fed upon this kind of irony, and in 2006 he staged a concert adaptation of his rock musical in Brooklyn. (Painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel shot the performances.) Where Reed once ham-acted the part of cuckolded savage Jim on the original, he sings here with both detachment and fatherly compassion. While ballads such as "The Bed" grow eerily placid, the Kurt Weill-like class commentary of "Men of Good Fortune" gains severity: Guitarist Steve Hunter embodies privilege with flashy heroics, and Reed represents unskilled labor via blunt six-string bursts. An encore duet with Antony on the Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" adds a sweet aftertaste to Berlin's bitterness. But the explicit gay sex and slaughter of 2000's "Rock Minuet" emphasize that Reed hasn't exactly gone soft....full text |
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