Send "Lou Reed " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Lou Reed's run of early-1980s solo albums hit longtime fans with the force of revelation: Finally, after suffering through umpteen aesthetically schizo 70s albums, Reed had assembled his most consistent and adventurous band since the Velvets. 1982's The Blue Mask, featuring guitarist Robert Quine's virtuoso blend of post-Reed skronk and speed-folkie melodicism, is still the one to slot alongside Transformer and Street Hassle. The album realigned Reed with the punk and new/no wave movements he helped sire, and it was helped into the canon by Reed's strongest (and most heart-wrenching) batch of songs in years.But 30 years on, it's hard to hear The Blue Mask as sonically assaultive so much as brutally personal, in a way that's got less to do with guitar dissonance than Reed's fearless self-laceration. Not since "Heroin" had Reed written a song as harrowing as "The Blue Mask", where the lyrics have the hideous specificity of a newly sober man unleashing a lot of backed-up self-examination. 1983's Legendary Hearts-- which reassembles most of the Blue Mask band, swapping drummer Fred Maher for Doane Perry-- is fleeter and funnier where the previous album ground down at its themes. It's playful without being indulgent, the kind of record hardcore fans come to treasure because it proves that even their hero's second-tier efforts, the ones that get passed over when they're not starred in the record guides, can hide secret charms. What impresses 27 years on is Reed's range: "Don't Talk to Me About Work" is a nasty little one-note jab at 9-to-5 drudgery, akin to the gags that littered early Replacements albums (albeit way more literate, as you'd expect). But it's followed by "Make Up Mind", a ballad as tender as anything on The Velvet Underground, Reed and Quine feeding each other little bursts and swells of melody as the bass and drums keep heartbeat time. That range sometimes gets him into trouble, however. Reed's voice-- an instrument suited to, well, Lou Reed songs and very little else-- remains the most divisive component of his music. New listeners, or those not already charmed by his penchant for stretching his monotone sing-song via dramatic hops down an octave or two, may cringe a bit at the ultra-mannered emoting on "Betrayed". But by 1983, Reed had mastered the conversational style that starts with "I'm Waiting for the Man". The mumble-murmur of "Turn Out the Light" is so clearly Reed, providing such a specific kind of pleasure, that it might as well come with a trademark symbol attached to each line....full text |
| Blurt-online |
| It seems as though whenever anyone talks about the music of Lou Reed these days, it's narrowed down to either the Velvet Underground and his early 70s solo material. Reading some of the more prolific music magazines and blogs out there in the world, you would think that Coney Island Baby, Berlin and Transformer were the only three albums he recorded under his own guise. No wonder Lou hates talking to the press (something he reminded us of all too well during his heated exchange with SPIN Magazine editor David Marchese in an October 2008 feature. However, for those who can appreciate the totality of Reed's rewarding four-decade-long oeuvre as a solo act in all its twists and turns, be it Metal Machine Music or Mistrial, these remastered editions of two of his most noteworthy albums from the 1980s by the great Iconoclassic label are undoubtedly cause for applause. Neither 1983's Legendary Hearts and 1984's New Sensations contain any songs about transvestites, heroin or manic depression, which is most likely why this pair of misbegotten masterpieces have been largely unspoken of for all these years by the hipster cognoscenti. In fact, when Lou speaks of "Bottoming Out" on Legendary Hearts, he's talking about hitting a pothole on Rt. 80 in North Jersey whilst riding his beloved motorcycle, a lyrical and spiritual symbol that appears throughout both of these albums. Combined with 1982's The Blue Mask, Hearts and Sensations comprise Reed's "Average Guy" trilogy, providing a cohesive chronicle for the freshly clean and sober Lou to extol the virtues of wedded bliss with his second wife and former manager Sylvia Morales, similar to the way his pair of largely overlooked late period classics, 1996's Set The Twilight Reeling and 2000's Ecstasy, championed his love for current wife, avant-pop great Laurie Anderson. Additionally, Legendary Hearts features the ripest fruits from Reed's short-lived partnership with the late, great Robert Quine on lead guitar, who flexes arguably his finest performance in studio outside of Richard Hell and the Voidoids' Blank Generation and Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend here, while New Sensations was hailed by MTV's Kurt Loder in Rolling Stone as Reed's "most consistently winning rock & roll album since Loaded." In short, this is Lou at both his most enigmatic and unpretentious, showing he can do happy as quixotically as he can do sad. ...full text |
| Upcoming |
| Though he doesn’t get much love here at Popdose, Lou Reed has earned a spot in many of rock and roll’s hardest hearts. A whole generation of New York musicians grew up with him, the glam-rock movement idolized him, and punk may likely have never happened without his influence. Whatever he does or doesn’t do now, his legend is assured, and for a man whose songwriting formula never deviates too far from standard three-chord rock, he’s covered a lot of ground. With this in mind, it’s......full text |
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