Lou Reed

After you've devoted an entire album to the ultimate concept – death and the mourning
after – what do you do for an encore? If you're from New York and you're Lou Reed, you
write about the kind of small pleasure that makes life amid the ruins worthwhile: the magic
and luster of a good chocolate egg cream. Only Reed could invest a song about 50 cents'
worth of seltzer and syrup with roiling guitar and almost corny vocal zeal ("You s... More >

Ever since Sally Can't Dance, if not "The Ostrich," Reed has been writing stupid-sounding songs that outrage his intellectual fans and probably his stoner fans too. On his best album in over a decade, including three consecutive "serious" ones, these include the backward-looking "Egg Cream" (only a self-hater could resist that hook) and the silly-sexy "HookyWooky" ("Reed Reveals: F*cking Is Fun!") and even the defensively macho-cynical "NYC Man" (ass's confession as ass's boast). Hooray for Laurie Anderson, either for distracting him from his various higher callings or for urging him to be himself. In a related development, he rocks out on guitar. (Grade: A-)