104. The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat

Artist: The Velvet Underground
Album: White Light/White Heat
Year: 1967

Still 1967. Man, this year had a ton of albums. We're up to 104 albums on the list now, and all the albums since #76 have been from The Summer of Love (or at least that year) and there are still a few more yet to go. Best music year ever? I reckon it could be...most of these albums have been pretty darn pivotal in the advancement of popular music. Not least of which was the debut album of The Velvet Underground.

Now we're on to the Velvets' #2 record, White Light/White Heat. Believe it or not, I have not heard this album before now. I do quite like the band's first album, and their third album is a classic in my book, but I've never heard this one. Reason being, I don't care for the title track. I think it sucks, so I was never really eager to hear the rest of it. But here goes.

So this album is absolutely batshit insane. And I do mean that in the best possible way. Man. First off, the lyrics are just all over the place crazy. We've got the title track which is a glorification of amphetamines. Then there's "The Gift," an 8+ minute spoken-word epic about a guy who mailed himself to his college girlfriend, only to hear about her sexual escapades with some other dude and then get decapitated. "Lady Godiva's Operation" offers graphic voyeurism into a botched surgery. "Sister Ray" takes the cake here, an 18-minute opus that really needs to be heard to be believed.

And that's just the subject matter. Musically, this album seems to be the launching point for noise rock. Sonic Youth and their ilk would dig deeper into noise experiments twenty years later, becoming equally revered and reviled in their own right, but White Light/White Heat absolutely had to be a major inspiration for them.

So did I like it? Yes. A thousand times, yes. This is a magnificent album, probably the best I have heard from The Velvet Underground. I still don't care for the title track too much, it's annoyingly repetitive and Lou Reed's vocals grate on me. But in the context of the album, I realize that it's supposed to grate on me. And therein lies the genius. "The Gift" is just flat-out awesome, an audiobook-acid-trip of epic proportion. "Sister Ray" is just amazing, with guitars that sound like buzzing electric razors cutting in and out of Lou Reed's transvestite fever dream.

Essential.

Rating: Indispensable