Lulu

Lou Reed and Metallica

I like chocolate. It’s got a nice sweet flavor that I rarely crave, but am rarely disappointed by it. I love bacon. It’s salty, but not too salty. It’s not always perfect, especially when it’ either undercooked or when it’s too crispy. But, when it’s good it really hits the spot. However, that doesn’t mean if you combine them, they’ll form some super delicious breakfast dessert. Quite the opposite in fact: chocolate-covered bacon has to be one of the worst things I’ve ever tasted. Ever.

Here, Lou Reed is chocolate. He’s a good artist. I never really feel like listening to him, but I’m not disappointed by his music because I know what I’m getting into when I listen to him. Metallica is bacon. It can be disappointing at times (specifically the last 20 years in Metallica’s case), but when they hit their stride they've made some of the best metal music of all time!

Lulu is chocolate-covered bacon. It’s awful. It’s more than awful; it’s horrendous. After listening to the whole mind-blowingly exhausting 87 minutes of it I felt I needed to wash it down with something better. Which wasn’t hard because I have over 4,600 songs in my iTunes library and all of them are better than anything on Lulu. After listening to the opening lyrics on “Brandenburg Gate” (I would cut my legs and tits off / when I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski / in the dark of the moon”), I couldn’t wait for the song to end. It’s such a dud that I don’t think I need to say any more about it.

Unfortunately, Lulu rarely gets better than that. I was hoping it would but no song on this album was redeemable. By the time the final song, “Junior Dad”, rolled around I couldn’t wait to be done with the album and never listen to it again. But no. Lou Reed and Metallica felt that I needed a 19 ½ minute finale to get the most out of my ear torture session. By the way, the second half of “Junior Dad” is just meandering, pointless, droning noise that goes nowhere.

I get what Lou Reed was going for. He wanted to evoke a sense of anger in his poetry and saw Metallica as the perfect backing band to evoke this anger. Yes, I’m calling it poetry because the majority of the songs on Lulu are spoken word, with James Hetfield occasionally on backing vocals. In theory this was a ballsy, unique idea. Lulu is a success in that it succeeds in representing Reed’s anger and frustration that is depicted in his lyrics. If you factor out the lyrics, Metallica sounds as good as ever. However, as a combined effort Lulu is a sonically miserable, failure of an album. Listen at your own risk.

Recommended Tracks: None of them.