An Album Like This:

    I was initially confused and borderline disappointed with Cosmogramma when I first put it on.  After pouring into his back catalog and remixes I came to expect a certain feeling from Flylo tracks, something dark and simmering with a sinister sense of humor, music made by the dude grinning ear to ear in his promo shots ala Richard D James or the Joker.  His earlier more hip hop inflected work lumbered along in a narco haze, an already textured and gritty sound that would end up going into hyperspeed and endless grooves on Los Angeles.  With Los Angeles, there are beats on top of beats fighting other beats through thick smoky static, like so many bass bombed cadillacs passing each other on L.A.'s smoggy highway night.
   On Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus is equally comfortable delivering what listeners have come to expect from him (sick beats, tactile textures, an ADD predilection for 8 bit blips and beeps) and blowing those expectations wide open.  You hear it right away on Clockcatcher, first unleashing an unholy manic onslaught of space invaders artillery that has you thinking "too much too soon" right before it spins out in all directions leaving behind a field of sonic debris.  Much of the album's first half has an equally disorienting soundscape.  Sounds and melodies collide and fracture only to coalesce moments later into a cohesive groove.  It's disorienting but more than worth it.  This is how you know an album is going to be a grower, when you get halfway in and you already want to back track to get a closer listen.  It delivers the goods, but in such idiosyncratic and surprising ways that you're not sure how to take it at first.  You let in unravel and open up and discover a new way of listening until your more or less hooked.  Like, I really wasn't down with all the bit crunched bass solos at first, now I can't imagine the songs with out them.

    Although this wasn't the album I was expecting, it's actually the kind of album I've been waiting for all year.  Don't get me wrong, Teen Dream still makes my heart do swan dives into a sea of dark blue melancholy, but there's only so much of that I can take in my life.  Teen Dream is something to be careful with, to dole out with care or save for a rainy day.  Cosmogramma is an album to get lost in, to dwell upon and discover as well as (at times) something to play at a BBQ or a midsummer's dance party.  It's daring and inventive as well as warm and inviting, much like the man himself was when I saw him rocking a packed Double Door crowd, the wizard himself tearing it apart and grinning for days in sheer enthusiasm.

Skip All the Lou's: Part II, The Mask of Blue

Which is what brought me to The Blue Mask- often regarded as one of Lou Reed’s best solo albums, what he should have made in 1972, instead of Transformer (which isn’t terrible). It seems like taking Lou Reed solo albums as whole entities is a disappointing and embarrassing endeavor, so let’s go song by song and see if we can find more Lou Reed Greatness.

The Blue Mask: A quest for Greatness
1. My House-
a. Arrangement: Bass is a little cheesy, but the build at the end is cool.
b. Worst Lyric: “I've really got a lucky life
my writing, my motorcycle and my wife
And to top it all off a spirit of pure poetry
is living in this stone and wood house with me” Ugh. Wow. That first part of the verse sounds like someone’s overly earnest dad, which would be bad, but becomes unforgivable with his spirit of pure poetry shit.
c. Overall: Well, the build and repetition of “Our house is very beautiful at night” is pretty good. Can it overlook Lou Reed getting out the ouiji board and letting a spirit soar across the room? Maybe. And maybe this album isn’t so bad...

2. Women
a. Arrangement: These guitars are dripping in some lame effect, but their minimalism and chiming conversation is nice. The bass moans like it belongs in the background of the Little Mermaid’s Kiss the Girl though.
b. Worst Lyric: “A woman's love can lift you up,
and women can inspire
I feel like buying flowers and
hiring a celestial choir”
c. Overall: That worst lyric only won by a hair. The whole thing is embarrassing and terrible. A stanza about how Lou Reed used to look at women in magazines when he was in his teens. Maybe the worst Lou Reed song. Maybe the world’s worst song. My opitimisim takes a hit.

3. Under the Bottle
a. Arrangement: Kind of a bar band-lite. Does he need to borrow a distortion pedal?
b. Worst Lyric: Ooh woo weee son of a b.
c. Overall: Something about the concise quality of this song (and being next to the black hole of “Women”) make it seem okay. It’s forgettable, like bad radio rock. And it’s neatly composed if a little lazy. Not about to join “Heroin” in the substance abuse pantheon of rock and roll.

4. The Gun
a. Arrangement: Cool. The guitars are reminiscent of Galaxie 500, the bass is out of the way. Good groove all the way through.
b. Worst Lyric: This one’s got some of Lou’s good economical writing. I won’t pick out a lyric. I love when he says “I wouldn’t want you to miss a second.”
c. Overall: Yeah, alright. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but hey, neither do debates about the right to bear arms. Let’s keep going, with hope.

5. The Blue Mask
a. Arrangement: Sweet! It’s a little cheesy, but there’s a whole minute and a half of guitars squealing and stuff at beginning.
b. Worst Lyric: I’m not going to nit-pick. The delivery of muscle-rock isn’t the cool I go to Lou for, but this song is sweet and at this point I’m not complaining.
c. Overall: Yes! Yes! This has a sick ending. I’m on board, taking from the Station to Station playbook never paid off so well.

6. Average Guy
a. Arrangement: The distortion pedals are glowing, and even though this progression is nothing new (most of Coney Island Baby comes to mind), it’s still got a Bowie sheen that keeps it from veering into forgetablitly.
b. Worst Lyric: Um. So the whole thing is a little... inconsequential. Let’s go with “I worry about my health and bowels”
c. Overall: Things are taking a turn. This is about on par with Under the Bottle, in that it’s traditional grounding keeps it from being too hateful or likeable.

7. The Heroine
a. Arrangement: Just a great sounding electric guitar and vocals.
b. Interpretation: Um, so the love of a good woman will keep you together?
c. Overall: Another in the catalog of forgettable attempts at love songs I think. Something about the plaintive melody gets undercut by the repetition and overt self-seriousness.

8. Waves of Fear
a. Arrangement: Awesome. The ending is sweet. Two stallions trading leads and rhythm. Thundering along. Well done everyone. The bass is given something constructive to do as opposed to just ruining everything like it did for the first half of the album.
b. Best Lyric: “I curse at my tremors I jump at my own step!” The mic is maxing out and stuff. The whole part is awesome. And bizarre. Also “What’s that on the floor?”
c. Overall: This song is the most triumphant tribute to freaking out I’ve ever heard. I love it, and it makes no sense. Why is this song about being afraid of everything around you? Drugs, I would assume. Anyway, for what it is, with a skidding shuddering left channel guitar making the case, it’s more than passable. It’s funny though.

9. The Day John Kennedy Died
a. Arrangement: Ugh, the world’s most annoying bass sound is back to rule the middle of your mind. And who’s the lady back-up singer in here. Like these little cymbals clipping along though.
b. Baby Boomer Unbearablitiy: Big Time. I understand this was a monumental event, but this song is more insult than homage.
c. Overall: If we’re to believe this moment meant that much to LR, then we’re allowed to wonder if there’s a better way to phrase it than “I dreamed that I could somehow comprehend that someone
shot him in the face.”

10. Heavenly Arms
a. Arrangement: Big and broad. Great melody. Perhaps the only Lou Reed song that could use more instrumentation.
b. Does the delivery live up to its ambition: Well, he says “Heavenly Arms” a lot. But the melody holds up where the writing’s weak. It’s a really pretty song.
c. Overall: A fitting send off to an album of songs with narrow and specific concepts, that, if broadened, could’ve been a lot better.

So, it’s not Loaded Part II, but it was unfair to expect that. Safe to say Mr. Reed doesn’t really know what he does best, and at this point thought furrow-brow seriousness and earnesty was the way to go. And for... like 3, maybe 4 songs the instruments do what his writing does erratically at best, and we’re with him. For the rest, it kind of feels like someone’s cleaned up former biker-dad bashing it out on a Friday in Rockford. And I guess that has a place.

Skip All the Lou's: A Quest for a Decent Solo Album pt. 1

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Lou Reed to our musical landscape, and larger culture. Those Velvet Underground albums are the bedrock upon which the ideals of avant-garde rock were lovingly placed, and it would be hard to think of a worthwhile band (from, say, 1970 onward) that isn’t largely indebted to them. Just as Jonathan Richman predicted in 1970, in a way the Velvets have become as important as The Beatles. I have a simple test to prove this to be true: Name a year both bands released an album: Go ahead. 1967? Okay The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper’s. Whoa, hard to top right? Bam! Velvet Underground and Nico! How do you like them bananas? To even argue their importance seems redundant. Let’s move on.

The only real problem is that there are only those 4 VU albums (let’s disregard the Lou-Reedless and unavailable fifth album, as I haven’t heard it, and this is mostly about Lou Reed). Where does one go after she or he has shredded with the Black Angel, eagerly waited with Waldo in the box, closed the door, and watched that train go ‘round the bend? I, myself, will still have periods where I’ll listen to one of these albums, and even though I’ve heard it many times, I’m still impressed, I still enjoy it. But there’s less than 40 songs.

Here is the interesting thing about both the VU and The Beatles. After you’ve really listened to their canons, and really made them something you know, you should probably switch to listening to Bowie. He’ll safely get you through to the 80’s and then it’s time for American Indie to come and save your bloated soul. I know there are solo albums from all of these songwriters (hell, both Moe Tucker and Ringo Starr have albums. God help us all), but I’m increasingly convinced that try as you may, the solo albums merely tarnish the image of the songwriter, especially the further you get from their seminal band.

And for no one is this more true than Lou Reed (well maybe George, certainly Paul, and of course John...well Lou Reed for now). Listening to his solo work turns him from brilliant writer, to likely idiot savant, who merely was around an era we now think is awesome, and happened to write shit down, probably on accident. The arrangements, which seemed so sweet as dark and shrill, all turn into Las Vegas schmaltz with such a swiftness and consistency you can’t help but wonder if maybe Sterling Morrison doesn’t get enough credit (this suspicion is confirmed if you ever hear John Cale’s Paris 1919).

But there are still green shoots. One gives up on Lou Reed only to hear “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Street Hassle” and “Berlin” and wonder if maybe there’s still more Reed-brilliance out there. And you want to believe! You want your mind blown again! You want a brilliant beat-poet-avant-garde-leather-rock-hero! Of course you do! We all do!

Coming Soon! A track by track break down of The Blue Mask, an album that is known as the heir to the Velvet's sound!