•
Rating: Letters from Hell.
Dear Lou
You put on the masks, I took them off. But in the end, we both showed that behind every face there is an abyss.
We sprinkled light over those shadows in the hope of listening to a cursed record. Vinyl etched with blood and velvet, a dark room with the curtains drawn, and a glass of bourbon trembling at every note of your visual score. And I thought: this is my world, but with more elegant masks.
You staged what I longed to sing for years: desire that writhes, flesh that is sold, love that disguises itself as obsession, where sex is ritual and truth is a code to be deciphered.
The difference is this, Lou: you closed your eyes to see better. I kept mine open so as not to go insane. But we both told the same story: that of those who seek something that can't be said, only lived.
If we had ever met, we wouldn't have talked much. Perhaps only an exchange of glances, a nod, and then away. But know that I understood you. And that in this album I heard my own voice, even if I never sang.
You put on the masks, I took them off. But in the end, we both showed that behind every face there is an abyss.
In 1969, while America deluded itself into believing it stood at the threshold of a new era of peace and love, the Velvet Underground were already digging a grave. Not to bury themselves, but to plant seeds of something murkier, more real. In a time of Woodstock and psychedelic smiles, Lou Reed and his companions prowled smoky clubs like preachers of an urban liturgy, where heroin was the Sacrament and love was a Damnation to be contracted warily.
This double live album, recorded between Dallas and San Francisco, is a confession.
In the mute and dark corner of the confessional, kneeling, the words grow soft, as sin is laid bare. A nocturnal diary written with fingers stained by nicotine and blood, the songs don't begin but emerge, don't end but dissolve.
The audience is a shadow, the band a mirage.
Everything is muffled, as if filtered through dirty glass, by a lens that distorts reality and transforms it into a fever dream.
I'm Waiting for the Man raises the curtain like a ritual of waiting. There's no rush, only need. The rhythm is slow, almost blues, but underneath pulses an anxiety reminiscent of the ticking of a clock in a room with bricked-up windows.
What Goes On expands, repeats, coils around itself like a mechanical mantra. Here's where the music begins to mutate: it becomes a white corridor, illuminated by neon lights, where each note is a step toward something irreversible.
Lou Reed doesn't sing, he interrogates. His words are sharp blades, and Doug Yule accompanies them with a bass that throbs and vibrates like the heartbeat of a machine.
Heroin is the coiling and disquieting spiral that slowly sinks you into that sonic injection. The crescendo is a spiral that lifts you and lets you fall so suddenly, like a dance between ecstasy and death.
And as White Light/White Heat stretches into an instrumental delirium, the world becomes a white room, where pain is aesthetics and violence is choreography.
At a certain point, without warning, the music enters territory that is no longer just decadent but sweetly disturbing. Voices overlap, the lyrics become fragmented, like the thoughts of a young man with his mind and movements frozen by the white dress and an excessively wide smile.
Some Kinda Love becomes an inner dialogue between desire and repulsion, Femme Fatale, sung by Lou, loses its grace and turns into a threat.
There is no longer any difference between the stage and reality. The songs are scenes from a film that has never been shot, but that we've all seen and often wish to forget. A film where the milk is drugged, the laughter is hysterical, and love is a word uttered only with your lips sewn shut.
This live album is a monument to the end of innocence. There's no nostalgia, only awareness. The Velvet Underground don't seek redemption, but acceptance of the fact that beauty can be dirty, music can be uncomfortable, truth can hurt.
And in this, they are more punk than any distorted scream.
Tracklist
Loading comments slowly
