It’s amazing that Lou Reed is not considered one of the great songwriters to come out of the 1960s and 1970s. He writes killer lyrics within a strong personal aesthetic and puts them into songs with strong, moving melodies. Yet despite his power and proficiency, he’s often overlooked in favor of more obvious choices, such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young or even David Bowie.
But other than popularity, there is nothing they have accomplished that Reed hasn’t done himself.
His new double live album, “Animal Serenade,” is the great expression of his songwriting power. Though it pales in comparison to some of his better studio work, the performance shows an artist in constant forward motion, always reworking old ideas while trying out new ones. Though he can be accused of many things, complacency isn’t one of them.
The album opens with the instantly recognizable opening chords of “Sweet Jane,” which suddenly comes to a stop when the audience begins to applaud. It turns out to be a joke on Reed’s part, and he tells the audience that he “would explain to you how you make a career out of three chords.”
The album really begins a couple of songs later with “Men of Good Fortune,” a song from Reed’s criminally underrated “Berlin” album. It’s a moving meditation on class distinctions that is able to avoid the pitfalls of elitism and hypocrisy. The song sets the tone for the rest of the album: cool, mellow, almost funereal in tone, like a eulogy that describes the good times a person had while reflecting on the loss.
The next great track on the album is “Ecstasy,” one of Reed’s best songs and one that typifies most of his work. It’s incredibly cool, juxtaposing the melodic and the noisy but preferring the former. You can tell that this is a song written by the man who made wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night seem acceptable.
“Street Hassle” typifies another kind of Reed’s songs, the sort that depend heavily on monotonous arrangement. Playing around with monotony is a dangerous thing for any composer to do, because there is the risk of boring the audience. But here is where Reed’s lyrical powers come into play. His grimy narratives of New York City street life draw people in, while the grinding guitars and cellos sound like the noise of the city.
The first disc ends with the first Velvet Underground song of the performance, “Venus in Furs.” Though it’s missing John Cale’s electric viola, which gave the original its punch, this version works on its own as a more atmospheric piece. The second disc contains four more songs from Reed’s work with the VU, ranging from the pastoral “Sunday Morning” to the pulsating “Heroin,” which is probably the best expression of junkie nihilism. How can you beat lines like “I’m as good as dead / Thank God I’m not aware / Thank God I just don’t care”?
For all its better qualities, the album is not without faults, particularly in Reed’s over-dependence on ballads. While there is nothing inherently wrong with ballads, and Reed writes some of the best, they don’t hold much interest for the six to eight minutes Reed and his band stretches them out to. Also, since many of these songs have been recorded before, and in better versions, the album doesn’t feel terribly essential.
But then again, bad Lou Reed is twice as good as most of the acts performing today. And for anyone who is a fan of his work, or who is looking for an introduction to it, “Animal Serenade” is definitely a worthwhile performance.