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The Raven Lou Reed Sire/Reprise 2003
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Reviewed by Brian James
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When rock n' roll finally settles down in the dustbin of history next to jazz and the blues, Lou Reed should be hailed for doing to his genre what Charlie Parker and Howlin' Wolf did to theirs'. Like those stellar figures, Reed has not been the best or the most popular, and he certainly isn't the most consistent, but his contributions to his medium are so singular and influential that the story of rock music simply cannot be told without him. A truly stunning chunk of the sound, style, and concerns of the avant-garde have been forged from the four albums he concocted with the Velvet Underground. And, though his course was erratic, Reed managed to stay afloat in the 1970s, frequently in spite of himself. Since he sobered up in the 1980s, however, matters have changed. Often appearing lost, the erstwhile rock n' roll animal was positively tame for several years before temporarily triumphing with his New York trilogy. That glory proved fleeting as Reed sunk back into vapidity as the 1990s wore on. Suddenly, towards the end of the millennium, German theater legend Robert Wilson approached Reed about applying his musical talents to POEtry, a stage adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe short stories and poems. Reed jumped at the chance and has now released the result as The Raven, doubtlessly one of the most embarrassing records ever put out by a man of his stature. Coming in either a 75 minute single disc or an even more trying double disc set, The Raven stumbles from start to finish as the giant ambitions it contains are deflated by laziness and a striking dearth of ideas. The swollen list of guest stars -- David Bowie, Laurie Anderson, Ornette Coleman, the Blind Boys of Alabama, actors Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi -- should inspire as much suspicion as hope, and justifiably so. Reed does not collaborate so much as command, and the results are a huge waste of huge talent, particularly Bowie's inconsequential blip, "Hop Frog." Others fare better, such as Dafoe's reading of "The Raven" and newcomer Antony's beautifully slithering vocals, but nothing elevates the proceedings enough to compensate for Reed's flaccid songwriting. Showing not a dram of daring, creativity or even craftsmanship, he makes it nearly impossible to believe that this is the same man who wrote "Heroin," or even "Lonesome Cowboy Bill." Musically, The Raven is terrible, but what's still more irritating is the clumsy tie-in to Poe. This should've been fantastic motivation for Reed, but it obviously proved otherwise. It would be reasonable to expect an album full of spook and shadows since it's coming from and about two men who made their careers out of such things, but instead, the tone is largely bright and slick. At times, this encomium sounds downright good-natured, an adjective that shouldn't appear anywhere in the vicinity of Poe. Just as Reed of the 70s reduced the battered humanism of his Velvet incarnation to a laundry list of shocking behavior, so too does he turn Poe into an object of cheap horror, a kind of 19th-century Freddy Krueger. "These are the stories of Edgar Allen Poe," he sings at one point. "Not exactly the boy next door." True, perhaps, but this is hardly the stuff that eloquent tributes are made of. In fact, this barely qualifies as a tribute of any kind, not because it's so unlistenable, but because Reed gets the spirit of the affair all wrong. His biggest problem has always been not knowing what he does best and, consequently, what he does worst. Though his stab at hip hop on Mistrial's "The Original Wrapper" comes in a close second, his weakest suit has always been the love song, and his endless list of jilted band mates and lovers suggests why his meditations on the subject always ring so false. Did he actually think that the patronizing swill of The Blue Mask's "Women" was supposed to be flattering? More to the point, does he actually think that including reworked versions of his own "Perfect Day" and "The Bed" in what was supposed to be a giant love letter to Edgar Allen Poe was anything but narcissistic? The Raven lacks many things -- among them hard work, inspiration and intelligence -- but what is fatally absent is humility. | March 2003
Brian James is a freelance writer and musician based in Chicago. His writings pop up here and there on assorted music sites. |
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