Artist bio

See also: The Velvet Underground

Lou Reed is certainly responsible for some of rock's most memorable music. But in thirty years as a solo artist, he truly hasn't been able to create a body of work worthy of that which he masterminded in six years as frontman of the Velvet Underground.

In that capacity, Reed cranked out the likes of "Heroin," "I'm Waiting For The Man," "Venus In Furs," "Sister Ray," "I'm Set Free," "What Goes On," "Rock N' Roll," "Sweet Jane," "New Age," the list goes on and on. Of course, such a canon was going to prove hard to live up to after the group disbanded.

So sweet Lou has crafted a unique musical career, from the hit singalong single "Walk On The Wild Side" to the monochrome sizzle of "Metal Machine Music" to the GOOD ROCK ALBUMS "The Blue Mask" and "New York" to the sloppy pap of "Sally Can't Dance" to the sickly heroin addict in makeup of the early '70s to the Poe-quoting explorer of darkness on "The Raven" to the average guy in, well, "Average Guy."

He's been a lot of things to a lot of people, and rock historians will find it hard to sum up Lou's career once he's gone. Since he's still here, I'll save myself the trouble and just say he's a great songwriter without whom rock as we know it would be a far different genre.

Albums by this artist

Ecstasy (2000)

Lou Reed

Ecstasy

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Lou Reed Ecstasy Reprise, 2000 RiYL: Velvet Underground, Laurie Anderson, John Cale

Hey, it's not great, but at least he's not making a mockery of himself like Iggy Pop does regularly. Ecstasy is the best record Lou Reed has made in a long time, which is enough. It's not fair to expect him to make Velvets- (or even Transformer-) worthy music after all this time. The best we can hope for is a record like Ecstasy, which neither apes Reed's earlier stuff nor tries to grab press coverage by making radical changes. Are you listening, Iggy?

For a guy whose solo career has featured such indignities as the shaved-eyebrow, whiteface low-rent Bowie knockoff androgyne period and the legendary Metal Machine Music, a record so awful reissue labels are still at war over the reproduction rights, Ecstasy comes less as a surprise than a relief. It's not awful! All right!

Ecstasy is built on several good midtempo riff rockers which have traditional Reed compositional simplicity with some less familiar flourishes by the seasoned-professional backing band added on. "Paranoia Key Of E" and "Mystic Child" start the album off nicely with Lou's classic, graceless singing and cranky guitars. "Future Farmers Of America" is a tremendously strange song which also kicks harder than Rock And Roll Animal. The 18-minute "Like A Possum" is a pretty awful wobble-drone, but "Big Sky" is a pleasant mixture of "Satellite Of Love" and the Kinks tune of the same name.

Reed has developed an even odder way of writing lyrics in his old age. On tracks like "Modern Dance," he almost seems to be reading prose over music. Only on occasion and seemingly begrudgingly do his vocals intersect with the instruments. It's an interesting effect which works well when the lyrics are interesting ("Baton Rouge") and not at all when they're not ("Mad," featuring the soon-to-be immortal couplet "Dumb / You're dumb as my thumb / In the wistful morning you throw a coffee cup / At my head").

Perhaps Lou Reed is the beneficiary of some seriously low expectations on my part, but Ecstasy is a pretty good record by a guy who's already more than established his greatness. At least he's not embarrassing himself. Any more.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.