Lou Reed
Perfect Night

THE REVIEW

On July 3, 1997, Lou Reed performs a semi-acoustic concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, as part of the Meltdown Festival curated by his partner Laurie Anderson. For the New York rocker, it's a total novelty, so for the occasion, he equips himself with a special guitar and takes the stage supported by the seasoned band composed of Fernando Saunders (bass), Tony Smith (drums), and Mike Rathke (guitar). Lou Reed is never banal and instead of lining up the usual famous songs from his repertoire, he decides to offer a surprising setlist by retrieving pieces that remained in the shadows, which gain new life thanks to the new arrangements.

The most glaring example in this sense is "New Sensations": included in the 1984 album of the same name, certainly not one of the best, it is elevated by Reed's aggressive vocal interpretation. Other more famous songs are transformed to the point of being unrecognizable: "Vicious" is stripped of the glam attitude that characterized it, "The Kids" becomes more overwhelming compared to the decadent original version contained in "Berlin", "Riptide" is stripped of the electric guitar that was its backbone and suddenly becomes frenetic, "Dirty Blvd" expands in length and gains in incisiveness. The strong point of the tracks is the interpretation given by the author, who with his distinctive charisma adds words, omits others, skips entire verses, sets new accents, sometimes baffling the listener: only the beginning of the concert follows the script, the beautiful and conventional "I’ll Be Your Mirror" and "Perfect Day" flow quickly and leave the role of protagonist to other pieces.
The setlist also includes three unreleased tracks: the polemical "Why Do You Talk", the lively "Into The Divine", and the delicate "Talking Book", which derive from a collaboration between Reed and Robert Wilson for the theatrical show "Time Rocker". Certainly, they don't compare to the other songs in the setlist, but they fit perfectly into the performance.

The CD version is a great testimony of this performance, which is not a masterpiece on the level of other live shows by the same artist (and won't go down in rock history), but still borders on perfection. Four and a half stars, and lots of applause.