Search (by artist, title, index or by star rating - e.g. "[*]")

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

#0104: White Light, White Heat - The Velvet Underground

The last album I reviewed by this lot featured a German chanteuse called Nico and it was, as I recall, abysmal.

The title track opens up and it's got a tune, it's got energy.  It's the sort of punky dirt I was expecting from VU and it doesn't bang on for too long so we're okay for now.

Who's doing the voiceover on track 2?  Is this Howard Marks?  It's some Welsh bloke reading a story over a trashy rockish groove with some noisy incidental guitar.  It's weird and has character and I know this is the sort of thing I should hate but this - and it's not cuz he's Welsh - I like.  The narration has a peculiar appeal.  It's eight minutes of the same chords but I'm listening to the story.  Ladies and gentlemen I may have discovered audio books!

Okay, I've had to look it up cuz he's singing now on Lady Godiva's Operation.  This is so wonderfully odd!  Maybe I'm just delighted that *anything* is happening after the last album but even tho John Cale's voice isn't what I'd call strong, it is as least in tune.

Lou Reed gets on the mic now and there are definite production issues with this.  His trademark vocal qualities are not fully formed as I recognise them and this is quite an awkward two and a half minutes.

I know this album is much lauded by punk and alt fans alike and I can certainly see it's ground breaking but I Heard Her Call My Name is spirit breaking for the first minute or two until it opens up into more of the chorus and we have some harmonies that soften the extremely harsh guitar noise.  Christ, is he doing that on purpose?

I should have counted myself lucky.  I now realise there's one track left and it's seventeen and a half minutes long.  It's called Sister Ray and I have a feeling I'll be crying out for Desolation Row by the end of it.  Here goes.

It's noisy and messy and trashy and all the things I detest but for a couple of minutes it's bearable cuz it's got character.  There's this keyboard sound that comes in and makes some good melodic contributions but then becomes more and more chaotic as the song continues and the words get more disjointed and tuneless and then everybody just loses their shit.

The drummer is keeping the beat going but Christ alone knows what he's playing in support of.  What is he holding together?  Maybe it's his sanity he's hanging onto while these spannered wreckheads run around the china shop with baseball bats.  It's fucking aural carnage.

Just under 10 minutes have passed when hurricane Junky starts to calm.  The drums are still going tho and there's a repeated vocal about "sucking on my ding dong" and the keyboard is making this noise like a horse snoring with a harmonica in its gob.

What in the misanthropic, genocidal fuck is the engineer thinking during this abortion performed by a blind piranha with a pencil?  Did the record company listen to this before releasing it?  15 and a half minutes gone and the keyboard player appears to be simulating the arrival of riot police in force.  Is he trying to scare them into stopping, perhaps?  The lyrics are claiming "he couldn't hit it sideways".  If he's talking about a sense of key it's the most astute observation he's made to date.

It's stopped.  I am sat in the silence, letting my ears ring.  Oh blessed moment of tranquillity.  I'll listen to The Gift again at some point but the rest of it can fuck off on the fastest mode of transport available.

1 star.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Opinions are like arseholes. They're never wrong. But I'd rather you express one than be the other :-)