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LISTEN TO IT #40: METALLICA MACHINE MUSIC
Oct. 27th, 2011 10:13 amSo Lou Reed and Metallica made an album.
No, really.
It’s called Lulu, which is supposedly going to be released on Halloween, but is already available here in HK for some reason.
Inevitably, critics are shredding it. As are novelists. And Hitler.
You can listen to the whole thing here and make up yr own mind. I did, and I can understand why people don’t like it. And at the same time, I think it’s a little unfair.
For a start, people were bagging on the very idea of a Reed/Metallica album before they released a single note. But in an age of mash-ups where you can have Beyonce front Nirvana and the Sex Pistols backing Madonna, an actual Lou Reed-Metallica collaboration isn’t that odd a proposition. So why not?
I do think that how you feel about the finished result will probably depend on how precious you are about either Reed or Metallica’s separate works. In both cases, I’m a bigger fan of their earlier albums than anything they've done in the last 20 years, and personally, these days I’m more likely to listen to, say, Transformer, Berlin or New York than Master Of Puppets, Ride The Lightning or Kill ‘Em All. And I won’t pretend that Metallica’s metamorphosis from really good speed-metal band to Some Kind Of Monster-era Spinal Tap isn’t a factor here.
Still, one thing I’ve always respected about Metallica is their willingness to try different things just to fuck with people. So a gig as Lou Reed’s backing band seems like as good a move as any for Metallica at this stage. And trust Lou Reed to not only collaborate with the biggest metal band on Earth, but to do it for a song cycle based on a trilogy of German expressionist plays by Frank Wedekind, with one song taking 20 minutes to perform.
As for the actual music, it works more than you might think. Songs like “Brandenburg Gate” and “Iced Honey” actually sound more Reed-ish than MUYA. On the other hand, as a friend of Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy observed, “[it] sounds like Woody Allen trying to tell a joke in your ear at a Limp Bizkit concert.” Fair call.
But I don’t know if I can bring myself to buy it. It’s one of those things that – like, say, a heavy metal concept album about Charlemagne with lead vocals by Christopher Lee – is great in theory, okay in practice, but not really essential. Put another way, it’s not the worst thing either of them has done separately, but that’s no reason to fork out full-price for a copy.
That said, I’d be okay having it as a torrent download or someone ripping me a copy (if only to annoy Lars Ulrich).
If nothing else, though, thanks to the 30-second previews of each song, Lulu is probably the first ever album to inspire a parody/covers album before the original album actually came out. Even Guns’n’Roses never managed that.
Injustice for all,
This is dF
No, really.
It’s called Lulu, which is supposedly going to be released on Halloween, but is already available here in HK for some reason.
Inevitably, critics are shredding it. As are novelists. And Hitler.
You can listen to the whole thing here and make up yr own mind. I did, and I can understand why people don’t like it. And at the same time, I think it’s a little unfair.
For a start, people were bagging on the very idea of a Reed/Metallica album before they released a single note. But in an age of mash-ups where you can have Beyonce front Nirvana and the Sex Pistols backing Madonna, an actual Lou Reed-Metallica collaboration isn’t that odd a proposition. So why not?
I do think that how you feel about the finished result will probably depend on how precious you are about either Reed or Metallica’s separate works. In both cases, I’m a bigger fan of their earlier albums than anything they've done in the last 20 years, and personally, these days I’m more likely to listen to, say, Transformer, Berlin or New York than Master Of Puppets, Ride The Lightning or Kill ‘Em All. And I won’t pretend that Metallica’s metamorphosis from really good speed-metal band to Some Kind Of Monster-era Spinal Tap isn’t a factor here.
Still, one thing I’ve always respected about Metallica is their willingness to try different things just to fuck with people. So a gig as Lou Reed’s backing band seems like as good a move as any for Metallica at this stage. And trust Lou Reed to not only collaborate with the biggest metal band on Earth, but to do it for a song cycle based on a trilogy of German expressionist plays by Frank Wedekind, with one song taking 20 minutes to perform.
As for the actual music, it works more than you might think. Songs like “Brandenburg Gate” and “Iced Honey” actually sound more Reed-ish than MUYA. On the other hand, as a friend of Pitchfork editor Brandon Stosuy observed, “[it] sounds like Woody Allen trying to tell a joke in your ear at a Limp Bizkit concert.” Fair call.
But I don’t know if I can bring myself to buy it. It’s one of those things that – like, say, a heavy metal concept album about Charlemagne with lead vocals by Christopher Lee – is great in theory, okay in practice, but not really essential. Put another way, it’s not the worst thing either of them has done separately, but that’s no reason to fork out full-price for a copy.
That said, I’d be okay having it as a torrent download or someone ripping me a copy (if only to annoy Lars Ulrich).
If nothing else, though, thanks to the 30-second previews of each song, Lulu is probably the first ever album to inspire a parody/covers album before the original album actually came out. Even Guns’n’Roses never managed that.
Injustice for all,
This is dF
