#1: Lou Reed - Berlin

2007 has been an interesting year for Berlin. Released just a year after Transformer, it was initially reviewed as overblown and too grim for its own damn good. But with a reissue this year and Reed performing the entire album live, it seems like thirty-four years after its release, the revisionist reviews have almost universally bumped it up to near the top of his oeuvre (see also: Pinkerton, the Stooges catalog, and all of Led Zeppelin's albums if you're Rolling Stone).

As much as I love those four (real) Velvet Underground albums, my Lou Reed collection hasn't grown too quickly. It took me a while to get over how great Transformer was when I finally got it, and I ended up getting New York next, which probably wasn't the best plan. I also had a promo of his two-disc live album, Animal Serenade, which gave me my first taste of a handful of the songs on Berlin and taught me that if I ever go see him live, I'll have to exert tremendous patience.

The opening title track caught me a bit off guard, which is odd, since it's not really too far removed from anything on the Velvet Underground's third, chilled-out album. As soon as "Lady Day" started, I knew I'd gotten my money's worth. I instantly wanted to peg the track as being influenced by For Your Pleasure-era Roxy Music, but both albums came out in the same year, so it's hard to chalk it up to much more than coincidence or the zeitgeist. Reed is doing his best Bryan Ferry, whether he knew it or not, and the full instrumentation (the hallmark of producer Bob Ezrin, who would go to rehab immediately after this album's completion) makes the track stand out.

Here's a live version of a very blond Lou Reed - in frontman mode - performing a more rocked-out version of "Lady Day" in 1974.


The middle of the album didn't hold my attention as much, save for "Caroline Says - II." The use of a crying baby on "The Kids" made me twitch a bit; I think the only time that's been used effectively is on one of the segues on Tool's Ænima, but they processed the shit out of it and it sounds creepy as hell. The record picked up for me with the final two tracks, "The Bed" and "Sad Song," two of the most bummed-out songs Reed ever wrote.

Here's "Caroline Says - II" live...like, last week. The video's not amazing, but the audio is quite good for fan-shot footage.


Overall, I'm definitely glad I picked it, and I'll be giving this and Coney Island Baby some more serious attention over the next week or so. 2007 is such a weird year for an album like this to start getting acclaim again, but it's worth revisiting (or just visiting), and it's probably the most interesting (although not yet my favorite) Lou Reed album I own so far.