Title: Ooo my head
Review: Lou Reed's genius, in my opinion, is his ability to make music of his emotional honesty and humility. His demon is his pretension to be otherwise, as in "literary," "theatrical," andwhateveradjectivegoeswith "film." The more words you hear coming out of his mouth, the more words he uses to describe his album, the more abstract the album will invariably be--and the less listenable. Ergo the ridiculousness of "Magic & Loss" and the failures of "New York" (amid the successes), on one hand, and the grandness of "Coney Island Baby," the openness of "The Blue Mask" and "Legendary Hearts," and the poignancy of individual songs like 'Billy' ("Sally Can't Dance") and 'Lisa Says' ("Lou Reed"), on the other. "The Raven" commits every error in the Lou Reed handbook and offers nothing compensatory, as far as I can tell. Two stars for craft? Yet there's not one memorable song on the thing . . . And what's with the sword??
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