photograph by Mick Rock from the cover art of 1972's Transformer. In 2000, a remastered version of The Blue Mask was released. Critical reception Robert Palmer of The New York Times hailed it as the year's "most outstanding rock album," writing that Reed had finally matched the "hard, thoughtful, unflinching songs" of the Velvet Underground's groundbreaking debut from 1967. He also praised the musicianship, particularly Reed and Quine's guitar work, writing that they "interact with a sort of empathy and lucidity one expects from a seasoned jazz combo and the music always reaches out to invite the listener in, even at its most intensely personal level." Robert Christgau of The Village Voice initially gave The Blue Mask an A+ rating: "Never has Lou sounded more Ginsbergian, more let-it-all-hang-out than on this, his most controlled, plainspoken, deeply felt, and uninhibited album...he sounds glad to be alive, so that horror and pain become occasions for courage and eloquence as well as bitterness and sarcasm." Christgau also praised the musicianship, writing that "Reed's voice - precise, conversational, stirring whether offhand or inspirational - sings his love of language itself, with Fernando Saunders's bass articulating his tenderness and the guitars of Robert Quine and Reed himself fleshing out the terrible beauty he's borne." Ira Robbins of Trouser Press praised the album as "a triumphant success" with "some of Reed's strongest writing in years. The portraits he paints are miserable characters living outside society; it's not clear whether or not they're fictional." NME said, "What made The Blue Mask Lou Reed’s watershed album was his choice of musicians, a new wave super-set of them – Fernando Saunders on bass, Doane Perry on drums, and the legendary Robert Quine on guitar. Alternately, Barney Hoskyns criticized the album for a "smarmy self-satisfaction that said: 'I may have been a bit of a jerk when I strutted around on stage with a needle in my arm, but I am now a bona fide Artist and you will treat me as such.'"The Blue Mask would later place fifth in The Village Voices annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. In a retrospective appraisal, Jess Harvell of Pitchfork praised Quine's "virtuoso blend of post-Reed skronk and speed-folkie melodicism" and wrote that "The Blue Mask is still the one to slot alongside Transformer and Street Hassle. The album realigned Reed with the punk and new/no wave movements he helped sire, and it