Lulu

• Posted: Wed 21 Dec 2011
• By: john haylock

If you were expecting a high art concept album about the Scottish bird who did a cover version of Bowies 'Man Who Sold The World' back in the Cambrian era, think again, this Lulu is a Lou Reed album with Metallica doing karaoke metal backing.

Apparently 'the Lulu plays' were written yonks ago by a German bloke ( who probably had a beard ), dead intellectual stuff, and what Lou's gone and done is write a bunch of extremely nasty lyrics using the plays as a springboard into the depths of vileness.

An album that kicks off with a lyric that reads 'I would cut my legs and tits off when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski in the dark' ' is not going to be mistaken for the new One Direction single. yes welcome back, sex ! death ! murder! and not forgetting our old friend self loathing.

It's extreme only in the sense that a founding member of the legendary Velvet Underground, wrinkly bi polar octogenerian nymphomaniac fronting the worlds greatest heavy metal band can be. You will be repulsed and then if you play it again, be even more repulsed, but at the same time mysteriously finding yourself (gradually) warming to this ten track misery marathon.

The aforementioned lyrics come from 'Brandenburg Gate' (I was hoping that should read 'Battenburg' as i'd be on more familiar cake based territory). I haven't got a clue what it's about, but it does have the requisite rock noise and the big scary bloke in Metallica shouts repeatedly 'smalltown girl'. 'The View' continues in the same slow methodical way (in the same way a tank crushing soldiers underneath it is methodical ), Lou spits out bile 'I want to see your suicide' ...and the way he phrases the lyric 'worship someone who actively despises you' is actually quite thrilling.

By the time we get to 'Pumping Blood' you may be crying 'make it stop !' but it doesn't, it purposefully kicks aside your folk cd collection and laughs in the face of silence, nasty strident riffs abound and Lou bafflingly shouts 'waggle my ass like a dog prostitute'... 'use a knife on me '.....it has a middle section like armageddon in a guitar shop.

'Iced honey' by contrast is almost a conventional 'normal' rock song and not so interesting, better by far is the mad 'Cheat On Me' which starts off deceptively slow and almost pastoral, that is until Lou takes some viagra and they explore the finer points of duplicity, all eleven minutes of it.

Frustration 'is the most dynamic of this mongrel bunch, helped in no small measure by a Black Sabbath /Tony Iommi inspired riff, not disimilar to 'Into The Void'. preceeded by some random noise then BANG !....it's christmas time in the OAP home.......'dry and spermless like a girl' ...'I want so much to hurt you'.....'frustration is my lexicon of hate'....just some of the charming turns of phrase, he does what it says on the tin., I couldn't get a hard on for a week after listening to this. A stupendous piece of work.

But there's more!, after all the bodily fluids have dried up and the nurse has been round with sedatives the final track 'Junior Dad' is a lengthy orchestral piece with nice bass, not bombastic or overplayed, just plain bizarre and quite moving as it seems to deal with losing someone dear... the grim reaper is listening on headphones and Lou doesn't give a shit.

I hated this album when I first heard it, now i'm just confused. Perhaps if you listen to this like a piece of spoken art , a poetry reading for an audience of sado masochists, then, like me , you might be slowly (very slowly) converted.