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Detailed item info
Album FeaturesUPC:093624953708Artist:Lou Reed/MetallicaFormat:VinylRelease Year:2011Genre:Art Rock, Rock & PopNumber Of Discs:2
Track Listing
DISC 1:
1. Brandenburg Gate
2. The View
3. Pumping Blood
4. Mistress Dread
5. Iced Honey
6. Cheat on Me
7. Frustration
DISC 2:
1. Little Dog
2. Dragon
3. Junior Dad
DetailsDistributor:WEA (Distributor)Recording Type:StudioSPAR Code:n/a
Album Notes
First
and foremost, Lulu is a Lou Reed album. Metallica may receive
collaborative billing, and Reed has made canny use of the band's skill
set, but it's clear after the first ten minutes that he is the auteur on
this project, and most Metallica fans are going to be awfully puzzled
by Lulu. Then again, Reed's fans may be scratching their heads, too --
Lulu is a purposefully difficult album, one that insists you meet it on
its own terms, and the angry flood of sounds and ideas that pours from
its ten long songs demands more than a little patience. Lulu had its
genesis in a theater project by frequent Reed collaborator Robert
Wilson, who was creating a new adaptation of the plays of Frank
Wedekind; in these songs Reed sings from the perspective of a young
woman who is corrupted by her experiences with men, as well as some of
the characters she meets. The personal pronouns offer occasional clues
as to whom Reed is channeling at a given moment, but for most of its 87
minutes, Lulu sounds like one long, bitter, spiteful rant as Reed pours
out gallons of lyrical bile, mostly unfettered by rhyme schemes, and
with rare exception Reed doesn't sing here, he mutters or shouts or
barks like an angry beast. At the age of 69, time seems to be catching
up with Reed's strength, but he uses it to his advantage on Lulu, and
while he frequently sounds like a mean and slightly crazy old man here,
it absolutely suits the tenor of the piece. Reed holds nothing back, and
the torrent of curious, ugly, and puzzling images gets to be more than a
bit much, rarely cohering into a larger whole. As for Metallica, it's
easy to see why Reed wanted to work with them -- for this music, he
obviously wanted a massive wall of guitars, and James Hetfield and Kirk
Hammett certainly deliver, and with the band's usual acrobatic soloing
stripped from these performances, they summon a towering wall of
chugging menace on "Dragon," "Frustration," and "Mistress Dread." Reed
wanted Metallica for their strength and stamina, and they deliver, but
when he needs subtlety or dynamics they often drop the ball, especially
in Lars Ulrich's drumming, which is clumsier and busier than it should
be, and Hetfield's vocal interjections, which are full of arena-level
bombast and sound silly compared to Reed's weary croak, making the
frequent disconnect between the music and the lyrics all the more
telling. It's not difficult to see what Reed was shooting for on Lulu,
but one might argue Metallica were not the right collaborators for the
project -- the huge, arty drone of Sunn 0))), the stop-on-a dime assault
of the Jesus Lizard, or the limber noise of Shellac might have better
served Reed's vision. Ultimately, Lulu is a brave experiment for both
Reed and Metallica, but it's one that falters as often as it succeeds. ~
Mark Deming