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THE RAVEN
Lou Reed
(Reprise/Warner)
Every year, on the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, an unidentified mourner visits his Baltimore grave in the dead of night, toasts him with cognac, leaves the bottle and three roses behind, and then slips away into the darkness.
We have no reason to suspect Lou Reed is making these annual nocturnal appearances. Then again, if Lou were to own up to them, we wouldn't be surprised either. He and Poe have always been kindred spirits -- popular artists who share a dangerous fascination with the decadence, degradation and desperation that lurk beneath the seamy underbelly of society. Lou may have preferred amphetamines to absinthe, but his Rock and Roll Heart beats to the same rhythm as Poe's Tell-Tale one. And we doubt both men wrote pieces titled The Bells by coincidence.
With his 20th solo studio album The Raven, the former Velvet Underground leader tips his hat to Poe once again. Only this time, we're not so sure the old man would appreciate it. On the surface, The Raven sounds enticing: Lou and his band, joined by guest stars from David Bowie and Ornette Coleman to Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi, celebrate Poe on a slate of songs and spoken-word cuts (many culled and adapted from his New York stage show POEtry). But when you actually dive into the album -- which comes as a 21-track single CD or a 36-cut double-disc set -- you begin to see that, as in a Poe story, things are far more sinister than they appear.
The most obvious problem is also the most egregious: Lou has rewritten Poe. (Either that or he's privy to some drastically different manuscripts than we are.) And we don't mean he's changed a few words to make them scan better as lyrics. That we could forgive. But having Dafoe recite a radically reworked version of the ominous title poem -- which now includes the word "dickless" -- well, that's tougher to swallow. Yes, we know Lou is paying homage to Poe by reimagining him, channeling his vision through the prism of contemporary society and Reed's own artistic sensibilities. Even so, we wonder how Lou would react if somebody "reimagined" Take a Walk on the Wild Side or Sweet Jane. We bet he would call them arrogant, disrespectful cretins for screwing with another artist's work. He'd be right.
Even assuming you just skip the hubristic spoken-word bits, The Raven is still a hit-and-miss affair. There are only a few standout tracks, and often they're the more esoteric ones. The mournful Call on Me, the haunting Guardian Angel, the sombre revamp of his Transformer classic Perfect Day and the minimalist piano ballad Vanishing Act reflect the dread and despair at the heart of Poe's work. The gospel-soul of I Wanna Know (The Pit and the Pendulum), featuring the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the gritty jazz-funk of Guilty, guest-starring free-jazz sax legend Ornette Coleman, don't really remind us much of Poe, but they're a couple of the better songs Lou has penned lately. But with the notable exception of the wah-wah-laden fury of Blind Rage, most of the harder-rocking fare -- like the chugging Edgar Allan Poe ("Not exactly the boy next door"), the plodding Hop Frog (sung by Bowie) and the funereal, metallic instrumental A Thousand Departed Friends -- come off as half-baked or superfluous. And the less said about Broadway Song -- which has Buscemi hamming it up as a lounge singer -- the better.
Hey, we know Lou's heart was in the right place. And it's not like The Raven is as annoying as Metal Machine Music or that 18-minute song about a possum on his last album. Still, he might want to put off that visit to the cemetery -- Edgar is liable to try to reach right out of the ground and throttle him. (More on Lou Reed)
Track Listing
1. Overture
2. Edgar Allen Poe
3. Call On Me
4. The Valley Of Unrest
5. A Thousand Departed Friends
6. Change
7. The Bed
8. Perfect Day
9. The Raven
10. Balloon
11. Broadway Song
12. Blind Rage
13. Burning Embers
14. Vanishing Act
15. Guilty
16. I Wanna Know (The Pit And The Pendulum)
17. Science Of The Mind
18. Hop Frog
19. Tripitena's Speech
20. Who Am I (Tripitena's Song)
21. Guardian Angel