Lou Reed— do ya remember him? The man responsible for making musical perversity into an art form, from the ragged avant roar of “White Light/White Heat” to the exercise in torture known as “Metal Machine Music”? Have you written him off as washed up every few years? I know I have—“Set the Twilight Reeling” has to be one of the worst albums ever released by an artist of his calibre. It’s almost as though ol’ Lou feels some sickly urge to torture his fans (contempt, perhaps?). Every once in a while though, he remembers that there’s more to being a musician than filling contractual obligations.
When I read the press release for “The Raven”, I had mixed feelings—certainly there was the potential for an interesting marriage: The bard of darkness vs. the bard of decadence. Of course, as with most projects that involve interpretations of Edgar Allan Poe, I also knew the spectre of outright pomposity and pretentiousness was looming, ready to cloak Lou in the mediocrity of the last ten years.
….And the winner is? Well, a bit of both, really. With a cavalcade of guest stars (Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi, Blind Boys of Alabama, Bowie etc etc), the quality is up and down. But when it clicks, Raven is probably his best work since 1989’s New York. Dafoe is particularly unwelcome with his overwrought recital of the title track, but when Lou decides to crank up the amps and kick out the jams, the celebrity cheese is easily forgiven. Stylistically, this fucker is all over the place: creepy neo-classical, lounge jazz, spoken word and all-out rawk. Raven is a very worthy addition to Lou’s brilliant but haphazard oeuvre. Hey Lou, welcome back… again.