The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

Released - March 1969

Genre - Art Rock

Producer - The Velvet Underground

Selected Personnel - Lou Reed (Vocals/Guitar/Piano); Sterling Morrison (Guitar/Vocals); Maureen Tucker (Drums/Percussion/Vocals); Doug Yule (Bass/Organ/Vocals)

Standout Track - Candy Says

The Velvet Underground's self-titled third album marked their first after the departure of founding member John Cale, and from its radical change of direction it's easy to perhaps assume that Cale was the driving force behind the noisy, discordant, self-consciously lo-fi quality of the band's work, the principal figure crafting their image as arty poseurs. VU frontman Lou Reed claimed otherwise, saying the change of style on The Velvet Underground was a conscious decision to do something different rather than fence themselves into a corner, and ultimately it's probably impossible to know whether this album was more a result of Reed's feelings of artistic stagnation or a direct result of Cale's departure. What's certain is that it's a huge step forward musically and, in many ways, their most consistent album. Their follow-up to the cult success of The Velvet Underground And Nico had been the brutal, punishing, thrashing noise of White Light/White Heat, an album which, try as I might, I just can't bring myself to love, largely due to the fact that the song "Lady Godiva's Operation" has actually induced a migraine twice while I listened to it.

This self-titled album couldn't be more different, with the band consciously going down a softer, more reflective avenue to create some of the most beautiful songs of their career, while the more uptempo rock songs rarely approached the discordant weirdness and challenging nature of the equivalent songs from their debut album, being fairly straightforward in their composition, arrangements and structure, though there's still room for the odd bout of weirdness such as the fuzzy, tortured guitar solo on "What Goes On." Even Reed's more challenging lyrical preoccupations are largely absent, with the underground culture of drugs and sexual deviancy that had been his principal obsession over the last two albums nowhere near as prevalent here, though Warhol Superstar Candy Darling was the inspiration behind the serene "Candy Says."

Whether the apparent abandonment of their earlier defining features alienated fans at the time can't be ascertained these days, as this album has gone on to achieve classic status largely through its ability to distil everything that made this band great without having to resort to self-conscious posing or noise experiments to make their point. Lou Reed's vocals are on top form, his sardonic drawl really bringing the band's slow grooves to life, and his guitar jams with Morrison enliven even the most simple songs, their playful interactions with one another making the one-chord groove of "Some Kinda Love" highly entertaining. "Candy Says" is the most profoundly beautiful the band would ever get, with newcomer Doug Yule singing lead vocals at Reed's insistence. Yule's cleaner, purer vocals render the song with an emotional sincerity that Reed's sneer might perhaps have failed to achieve. It's a truly moving account of somebody who's come to the decision to change their body and their identity in order to feel happier with themselves, and is by far the greatest musical exploration of transsexualism until Antony Hegarty arrived in the late 90s.

"Beginning To See The Light" is an enormously fun upbeat rocker in the vein of "I'm Waiting For The Man" from The Velvet Underground And Nico, and is the album's heady, delirious peak, the entire band storming through it with an infectious delight difficult to find elsewhere in their discography, and the closer "After Hours" is a brilliant childlike refrain sung in the simple, unaffected tones of drummer Maureen Tucker, who, if this is anything to go by, really should have been allowed to sing more often, so profoundly endearing is her voice. It's also worth mentioning "The Murder Mystery," which is this album's only concession to the weirdness of their earlier work, being a lengthy, tuneless, almost stream-of-consciousness piece of surreal reportage. It's significantly less aggressive than any of the weirdness on display on White Light/White Heat, but its arch surrealism feels out-of-place on this more straightforward art rock album, and it jars somewhat as the album reaches its close.

After The Velvet Underground, the band struggled to ever again achieve the artistic credibility and simply great musical heights they'd reached over the last few years. They would soon be signed by Atlantic and ordered to make an album that would achieve radio airplay by being full of pop hits, after which point Reed left the band in Doug Yule's hands and they quietly faded into obscurity. Lou Reed would go on to achieve acclaim in his own right as a solo artist, but already he'd given a huge amount to the world of music, standing as he did at the forefront of music's artistic underbelly, already having given enormous inspiration to David Bowie, the man who would go on to define the sound of the early 70s, and to shepherd Reed's solo career to global success.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Lou Reed.

1. Candy Says

2. What Goes On

3. Some Kinda Love

4. Pale Blue Eyes

5. Jesus

6. Beginning To See The Light

7. I'm Set Free

8. That's The Story Of My Life

9. The Murder Mystery

10. After Hours