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You will likely have already made up your mind about “Lulu,” the Lou Reed/Metallica record for which no one clamored, now streaming in advance of its release date at www.loureedmetallica.com — where the very first words you hear are: “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski in the dark of the moon.”
You will have made up your mind because Lou Reed and Metallica have been releasing music for a combined 62 years already, and in that time both acts have been so totally abusive to their own fan bases — whether via frivolous, file-sharing-related lawsuits, “Metal Machine Music,” or that documentary about James Hetfield’s feelings — that if you ever cared about either you have long since figured out your coping mechanism, be it rabid hatred, or resolute affection, or some sort of distant bemusement at Lou Reed’s ego (which as a longtime New Yorker I’ve spotted from as far as six or seven blocks away), and not even Karloff and Kinski, and Reed wantonly sundering body parts he doesn’t have, could convince you to react otherwise.
Moreover, as a piece of music, “Lulu” sounds pretty much exactly like what you might imagine it to, which is to say unlistenable in something approaching the technical sense of the term — so dedicated to Reed’s gnomic and pornographic utterances about vulvae and the sword between his thighs that it’s physically uncomfortable to have vibrating in your ears, and so absolutely willing to pivot from some of Metallica’s best and most unself-conscious playing in years to be-bop-a-lou-bop drum-solo free association, that whatever tentative faith you might have been willing to extend is shattered early on, never to return.
And if these sentences seem long, apologies — the average song length on “Lulu” is eight minutes and 45 seconds, and I just wanted to see what it felt like.
But fame on the level that Lou Reed and Metallica have attained is in some fundamental sense about possibility: No one else could have foisted this record on us. And both acts are aware that at this point no one can properly hear anything they do anyway. To listen to Metallica is to hear “Kill ’Em All” and “Master of Puppets” and to see yourself as a headbanging teenager. To buy a Lou Reed record is to vote for some bygone era of downtown New York, or to quietly remind your friends that you continue to donate to NPR during pledge drives. Musicians who have been around as long as these guys know they are as much vehicles for our own projections as they are artists in control of what we hear and what we don’t hear.
The problem with using artists as a mirror, of course, is that someday they’ll actually show you yourself. “Lulu” houses the betrayed promise of a million high school poetry slams, a savage reminder of the way wealth insulates the fortunate from the less fortunate. These bands have money, they will release this record, we are powerless to stop it or even make them feel bad about it. Depending on your own situation, this can be a bitter pill to swallow — or, more to the point, it can be bitter listening Lou Reed swallow all kinds of things, including the word “candle,” which he pronounces “panda.” As in, “Like a panda in a spout!” What that means I leave to you.
And though you may not like it, you should consider respecting it, five grown men singing about pandas and butterflies in jars and puppy blood (er, make that “pumping blood”), alive with the joy of being able to do whatever they want, and then actually going ahead and doing it. We should all be so lucky to have the chance to make such an unloved album.
Download from iTunes
You will likely have already made up your mind about “Lulu,” the Lou Reed/Metallica record for which no one clamored, now streaming in advance of its release date at www.loureedmetallica.com — where the very first words you hear are: “I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski in the dark of the moon.”
You will have made up your mind because Lou Reed and Metallica have been releasing music for a combined 62 years already, and in that time both acts have been so totally abusive to their own fan bases — whether via frivolous, file-sharing-related lawsuits, “Metal Machine Music,” or that documentary about James Hetfield’s feelings — that if you ever cared about either you have long since figured out your coping mechanism, be it rabid hatred, or resolute affection, or some sort of distant bemusement at Lou Reed’s ego (which as a longtime New Yorker I’ve spotted from as far as six or seven blocks away), and not even Karloff and Kinski, and Reed wantonly sundering body parts he doesn’t have, could convince you to react otherwise.
Moreover, as a piece of music, “Lulu” sounds pretty much exactly like what you might imagine it to, which is to say unlistenable in something approaching the technical sense of the term — so dedicated to Reed’s gnomic and pornographic utterances about vulvae and the sword between his thighs that it’s physically uncomfortable to have vibrating in your ears, and so absolutely willing to pivot from some of Metallica’s best and most unself-conscious playing in years to be-bop-a-lou-bop drum-solo free association, that whatever tentative faith you might have been willing to extend is shattered early on, never to return.
And if these sentences seem long, apologies — the average song length on “Lulu” is eight minutes and 45 seconds, and I just wanted to see what it felt like.
But fame on the level that Lou Reed and Metallica have attained is in some fundamental sense about possibility: No one else could have foisted this record on us. And both acts are aware that at this point no one can properly hear anything they do anyway. To listen to Metallica is to hear “Kill ’Em All” and “Master of Puppets” and to see yourself as a headbanging teenager. To buy a Lou Reed record is to vote for some bygone era of downtown New York, or to quietly remind your friends that you continue to donate to NPR during pledge drives. Musicians who have been around as long as these guys know they are as much vehicles for our own projections as they are artists in control of what we hear and what we don’t hear.
The problem with using artists as a mirror, of course, is that someday they’ll actually show you yourself. “Lulu” houses the betrayed promise of a million high school poetry slams, a savage reminder of the way wealth insulates the fortunate from the less fortunate. These bands have money, they will release this record, we are powerless to stop it or even make them feel bad about it. Depending on your own situation, this can be a bitter pill to swallow — or, more to the point, it can be bitter listening Lou Reed swallow all kinds of things, including the word “candle,” which he pronounces “panda.” As in, “Like a panda in a spout!” What that means I leave to you.
And though you may not like it, you should consider respecting it, five grown men singing about pandas and butterflies in jars and puppy blood (er, make that “pumping blood”), alive with the joy of being able to do whatever they want, and then actually going ahead and doing it. We should all be so lucky to have the chance to make such an unloved album.
