Lou Reed – Ecstasy
David Bowie used to look to Lou Reed for inspiration and for hints at musical direction, but given Bowie’s triumph with Thursday’s Child, a reversal in focus is suggested: Lou Reed's Ecstasy is monotonous.
Lou Reed's muse is onanistic - which is a strength and a weakness. It makes him singular, sometimes. Other times it makes him irrelevant. Has anybody noticed the threads of emotional retardation in Reed’s mental fabric? He gets maniacally gleeful at the sounds that come out of his guitar and, on Ecstasy, he wishes us to be equally thrilled. "Wow," we should say, "Listen to that kick-butt guitar." Reed has always liked his music more than anybody else does, so there’s always a problem of distance. He doesn’t possess a self-censoring critical ear, and given his accomplishments, he probably doesn’t need one. Still it might have helped on Ecstasy.
Lou will easily overlook what’s wrong with this album, but most listeners won't be able to. Obviously the 18-minute "Possum" is 18 minutes overlong. King Crimson or Yes might pull off 18 minutes, but Reed, without John Cale, certainly never has managed the task, or even shown that he’s interested. "Possum" drones on down a long dark avenue with little melodic form, and absolutely nothing like musical filigree, contrapuntal rhythm, or chord-deviation to liven things up. Reed’s talents may be too "street," too realistic, to deal with something as imaginative and ambitious as an epic, and "Possum" quickly becomes a shoe-gazer throwback, full of Reed's trademark, and mannered, "rollerbladers giving head" style of writing. (Is "Possom" influenced by that long song on Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind? - I say "Yes.")
The drone-factor is present everywhere on Ecstasy, on "Paranoia in the Key of E" (wouldn’t all deteriorated mental states best be expressed in minor keys – except for maybe manic), "Mystic Child" (better done on New York), "Mad" ("You’re dumb, as dumb as my thumb," Lou cries - which means he's still hitting people with flowers), "Tatters" and "Modern Dance." It’s pretty evident these cloying chord structures and tuneless recitation aren’t going to add up to a classic album, so it’s best to look at the bright side of things on Ecstasy.
"Future Farmers of America" gets a few points for being Reedishly perverse in concept: "Born on a farm in a transatlantic moonlight, Sold like a piece of steer a piece of meat a cow, a breathing piece of shit; picked for my age for my strength and makeup; I could do what my fat owner can’t; I have a sex twice as big as her husband’s; kill your master with one cut of your knife, kill them during sex, during talk…." Reed is suddenly upset about slavery, but the master is "black" and the "Future Farmers of America" refrain is from Roosevelt’s New Deal.
But really worth hearing are "Big Sky," where Reed’s guitar harmony multi-dubbing finally rises above third-rate Neil Young fantasizing, and adds hugeness to the boast that the "big sky" holds up the sun, "but it won’t hold us down anymore." "Ecstasy" has a calypso-style beat or something like that, and a perfect lyric about not being able to hold on to that ecstatic feeling for any meaningful amount of time. It’s hard to figure out how Reed can alternate awful, confusing lyrics, with gems like this. "Ecstasy" and "Big Sky" are the closest Reed gets to pop on this album.
Also sweet, is yet another attempt by Reed at depicting a socio-path on "Rock Minuet." Reed points out rather clearly that all sorts of mayhem happen while listening to rock minuets. Reservoir Dogs pops into mind as a reference point here, especially on the "In the back of the warehouse were a couple of guys; they had tied someone up and sewn up their eyes; and he got so excited he came on his thighs, when they danced to the rock minuet."
"White Prism" and "Baton Rouge" are both songs about marriage turned ugly, and both show Reed writing deftly about an important subject. Reminds us once again that, metal-rock pretensions to the contrary, Reed’s music often works like that of the best folk artists: it may lack pop-craft cleverness and the technique of better musicians, but the power of observation is immediate and striking.
Ecstasy is 77 minutes long. We wish.