Artist: Reed, Lou
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1989
Rating: 4.7/5
In the liner notes to the album, Lou Reed wrote that all 58 minutes of music on the record should be heard in one go, from start to finish, and taken in as if it were a book or a film. Very fitting advice, since Reed is known as one of the best storytellers in modern and recent rock, and New York is his most cohesive and socially engaged album.
Plenty of people who only know Reed’s work superficially still swear by the hit-packed Transformer and look to that record for the peak of his artistry and self-expression. But that overrated 1972 album, produced by David Bowie (at times it feels like he practically made it himself), is a real pipsqueak next to the New York of seventeen years later, which is far more mature. The blend of Velvet underground and English glam that Bowie and Ronson brought to Transformer worked pretty well, but Lou Reed’s best lyrics were still a long way from being written.
New York is Reed’s bitter ode to his hometown, an album that reaches almost encyclopedically into the problem areas of modern society and takes us on a gloomy trip through the dangerous, bizarre side streets of a decadent metropolis. With the lines “I’ll take Manhattan in a garbage bag with latin written on it that says: I’ts hard to give a shit these days”, the opening track Romeo and Juliet sets the album’s course with conviction and draws attention above all to the plight of immigrants. Halloween parade is about AIDS, which cut down a good many of Reed’s friends and broke the once-proud creatures in high heels we meet on Transformer’s Walk on the wild side. On Dirty Boulevard, the only classically written hit on the album, which spent four weeks at number one on Billboard’s modern rock chart, we first notice a second guitarist, Mike Rathke (a good chunk of the guitars were recorded by Reed himself), who worked with Lou mostly on later projects. Mike helped him record most of the songs and gave the record a sturdier, more consistent sound. So New York is not just a collection of polemical lyrics, but a real, uncompromising rock album.
Endless cycle warns about child abuse, while the somewhat more satirical Last great american whale speaks very cleverly about the narrow-mindedness of Americans and the destruction of nature. The sarcastic closing line, “Like my painter friend Donald said to me: Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they’re done.”, speaks for itself. Beggining of a great adventure is marked by jazzy tones, and Busload of faith is pure blues catharsis. So this is a guitar album, but in the most minimalist sense, since the guitars never overshadow the vocals and serve more as a sonic backdrop, though one that’s always fitting and effective. “There’s nothing better than two guitars, bass and drums,” Lou writes at the end of the liner notes. And when a former Velvets member, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, sits behind the drums too, livening up the album with her contributions to two tracks, total nirvana is reached.
Of course, Reed also stops to take on politics. Good evening Mr. Walheim is an ironic tribute to politicians with murky pasts, among whom he counts not only the former UN Secretary-General and Austrian president, but also the pope, since it’s well known that the history of the Catholic Church is above all a history of the struggle for worldly power. Jesse Jackson doesn’t convince him either, with his lofty slogans (“Is common ground a word or just a sound?”) and his political demagoguery, to which Reed gives even more room in the song Strawman.
With the last track, Lou calms down a bit again and returns to familiar ground. Dime store mystery is a philosophical tribute to Andy Warhol, who died not quite two years before the album came out. Andy’s connection to the Velvet underground is known to everyone, but his influence on Bowie, who dedicated a song on his Hunky dory album to the pop art artist, was somewhat less talked about. Reed first remembered Warhol on Transformer, when he revived the memory of the attempt on his life in 1968 in the song Andy’s chest, an event largely overshadowed by Kennedy’s death two days later. Dime store mystery is thus a fitting farewell to a great artist, whose fate, closely intertwined with Reed’s especially in the mid-sixties, came to a close on April 1, 1987, at the funeral service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
New York is thus a classic concept album, whose theme is above all the contrast between America’s outward glitter at the end of the eighties and its political and moral decadence. It’s one of the most consistent cross-sections of that era and one of the most biting critiques of society and its order that either the artist himself or modern music has to offer. Where Waters’ monumental The wall criticizes the system through blurry metaphors and a subjective, individual poetics, Reed’s words are plain, never ambiguous, and don’t pull any punches. Lou is less ideological and more socially minded, a poet of the people, who with his directness seeps into every pore of social life and, as some of his earlier work already showed, touches every taboo, however untouchable.
So we could conclude that New York is a collection of carefully arranged, almost cinematically directed impressions, polemical and critical in places, nostalgic and bleak in others, all sharing one common point: the magnificent city where Reed has spent his whole life, and on whose streets you can still run into him today.
Lineup
Lou Reed – vocals, guitar
Mike Rathke – guitar
Rob Wasserman – bass
Fred Maher – drums, bass guitar
Maureen »Moe« Tucker – drums
Production
Lou Reed & Fred Maher
Track list
1. Romeo and Juliette
2. Halloween Parade
3. Dirty Blvd.
4. Endless Cycle
5. There Is No Time
6. Last Great American Whale
7. Beggining Of A Great Adventure
8. Busload of Faith
9. Sick of You
10. Hold On
11. Good Evening Mr.Waldheim
12. Xmas In February
13. Strawman
14. Dime Store Mystery
Running time: 56.54
