Confession time: I never got into the Velvet Underground. Other than \u201cFemme Fatale,\u201d I can\u2019t honestly recall any song of theirs I\u2019ve heard on a regular basis.<\/p>\n
In a sense, this gives me an advantage to approaching the solo work of Lou Reed; I can\u2019t take anything he\u2019s 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 \u201cWalk On The Wild Side\u201d has been played to death by classic rock radio.)<\/p>\n
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<\/i> or Lulu<\/i> (the latter a collaboration with Metallica). But Lou Reed<\/i>, his 1972 debut effort, actually proves to be enjoyable, if just a bit uncertain at times. It certainly was not what I expected.<\/p>\n
Reed\u2019s vocal style has hints of the spoken drawl that Bob Dylan popularized, but he also proves that he\u2019s not a half-bad vocalist more often than not. Tracks like \u201cLove Makes You Feel,\u201d \u201cI Can\u2019t Stand It\u201d and \u201cI Love You\u201d all showcase a talent that, for one reason or another, never got him the recognition he deserved, even this early in his solo career.<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s 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<\/i>\u2014despite being made up mostly of songs leftover from his Velvet Underground days\u2014was a surprisingly strong effort. Yes, his vocal style is not the easiest to quickly appreciate, but it\u2019s hardly off-putting.<\/p>\n
The only real moments of weakness\u2014\u201cBerlin\u201d and, despite the efforts to make it a fitting finale, \u201cOcean\u201d\u2014well, even these aren\u2019t terrible efforts. Perhaps they don\u2019t shine as well as some other offerings on the disc, but they\u2019re not tracks that would make the listener dive for the volume controls on the stereo.<\/p>\n
If anything, Lou Reed<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6848,5706],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-47405","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lou-reed","artist-metallica","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47405"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}