Reed's work transcends time, with its beauty shimmering beneath frightening
truths cloaked in the gutter. His observations and insight ring so
accurately that he is often mistaken as the subject of his own art. We
believe him completely. His complex visions of a temporary world in which
the stakes are always rising as the bottom line grows uglier and more
demanding, are the gifts of a rock & roll alchemist. Ashes to ashes, dust to
dust, Lou Reed's gold is a must.
The singer-songwriter-guitarist's works about madness and hope, desire and
treachery, reflections and addiction, are peopled by crackheads and
intellectuals, angels and whores, prisoners and enforcers, wild children and
diminished wolverine parents, the lost and the found in the arms of a
voracious hunger disguised as life. These individuals are also confused by
their own duality: accounts of memories, nightmares, visions,
shadows, cartoons and mysteries all entwined in Lou Reed's love for rock &
roll and its unlimited potential for salvation.
Lou Reed's America exists in previously uncharted waters. Few have explored
the heart, soul, brain, underbelly and dementia of this culture more
persuasively or poetically. He presents jokes like assassinations, love
letters like injections and rooms with a point of view, encompassing the
bleakest dead ends and the highest skies. There are no victims, only
survivors. For over 30 years Lou Reed has written the American history on
record, where the personal and political combine to create myth. His own
mythology continues to grow, like a great peacock, wings spread - an Icarus in
search of the sun.
The ultimate New Yorker's Ecstasy is the latest leap for an artist whose
talents continue to astonish with wit, daring and joy. Traveling across a
musical landscape that moves from paranoia through various stages of
discovery, doubt and reaffirmation, it attains its apex with the postmodern
symphonic power of "Like A Possum." This song follows in the stunning style
and energy of "Heroin," "Sister Ray," "Coney Island Baby," Street Hassle"
and "Magic and Loss" - epic pieces articulating the convergence of pure
poetry, twenty-first century blues and the drive of primitive rock & roll
beats.
Ecstasy has songs of undiluted cynicism cutting with Lou Reed's legendary
blade, while others suggest a valiant, yet weary, romantic still in search
of true love or its mirrored image. His songs sound and feel like no one
else's. Reed's guitar playing has become human in its vastness, every attack
infinite in its precision and passion. Once again, he is out to save lives
with music, and as always, Lou Reed's weapon is that, like it or not, he is
one of the few rock & rollers with the artillery to succeed.
Lou Reed enters the twenty-first century with his genius intact and his art
in fact. At this point in time, he stands with a body of work which places
him at a level of rock & roll artistry where few others dwell and most fear
to tread. From his very first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, his
influence has been profound, if not scary. And although that landmark album
met with nominal commercial success, it has sold many musicians on the
possibilities suddenly available to creative imaginations. Over the years,
Lou Reed has been recognized as a primal and constant force in a field where
"geniuses" come and go like so many fashion plates.