Confession time: I never got into the Velvet Underground. Other than “Femme Fatale,” I can’t honestly recall any song of theirs I’ve heard on a regular basis.
In a sense, this gives me an advantage to approaching the solo work of Lou Reed; I can’t take anything he’s done and hold it up to what he did as a member of the Velvet Underground, and I have to approach it with fresh ears. (This notwithstanding the fact that “Walk On The Wild Side” has been played to death by classic rock radio.)
It would be easy to simply write anything by Reed off if you compared it to the hit single, or the controversial releases Metal Machine Music or Lulu (the latter a collaboration with Metallica). But Lou Reed, his 1972 debut effort, actually proves to be enjoyable, if just a bit uncertain at times. It certainly was not what I expected.
Reed’s vocal style has hints of the spoken drawl that Bob Dylan popularized, but he also proves that he’s not a half-bad vocalist more often than not. Tracks like “Love Makes You Feel,” “I Can’t Stand It” and “I Love You” all showcase a talent that, for one reason or another, never got him the recognition he deserved, even this early in his solo career.
Maybe it’s that people approached this one with caution, wondering if this would be a weaker Velvet Underground-like effort. (In fact, several of the songs were leftovers from his previous band.) The fact remains that Lou Reed—despite being made up mostly of songs leftover from his Velvet Underground days—was a surprisingly strong effort. Yes, his vocal style is not the easiest to quickly appreciate, but it’s hardly off-putting.
The only real moments of weakness—“Berlin” and, despite the efforts to make it a fitting finale, “Ocean”—well, even these aren’t terrible efforts. Perhaps they don’t shine as well as some other offerings on the disc, but they’re not tracks that would make the listener dive for the volume controls on the stereo.
If anything, Lou Reed is the kind of album that is begging to be rediscovered, and will leave people wondering just why this was a commercial flop back in the day. It is a powerful first effort from Reed as a solo artist, and is well worth checking out.
