Sacred Cowpats: December 2019

Lou Reed's debut album, released in 1972, is a strange album. And, let's face it, kind of a failure. After the heights of the Velvet Underground, who across four albums released some innovative and resonant music, this is... well, pedestrian at best. It opens with I Can't Stand It, one of several (at the time) unreleased Velvet Underground songs he chose to record for this album. A big problem here, and across the album is Reed's vocal. It sounds like he was told to 'try and sing', rather than his sing/speak style which suits him so well. The band are ok, but not great at confronting any subtleties.

Some songs here appear to have come from a random Lou Reed song title generator, Going Down, Wild Child, Walk It and Talk It. The last of these sounds like an attempt to ape the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar and doesn't suit Reed at ALL. Oddest of all is Berlin, reprised for his excellent 1973 album of the same title. Here it sounds very much like 'cocktail party music', a whispered Reed vocal, over pleasant sounding soft rock. It's not bad at all, but again, doesn't really suit Lou Reed. I Love You is a charming little song, and one of the stronger ones here, and it's followed up by Wild Child, which is probably the song that works best on this album.

Worst of all is the final song, Ocean. The band of session players assembled here cannot cope at all with the pacing of this song and smother it in instrumentation, while Reed sings it TERRIBLY. Don't listen to this version, go seek out the Velvet Underground version, found on their collection of outtakes V.U., which is excellent. Overall this is a skippable album in Lou Reed's back catalogue.