LOU REED - "WORDS & MUSIC (MAY 1965)" LP

LULUS:

With an artist like Lou, one that encourages a cult like obsession from fans, it can feel like that throughout the years and years of excavated demos, clandestinely traded bootlegs, and rock'n'roll campfire stories there's not any surprises left to be found.

"Words & Music", the inaugural entry in Light In The Attic's Lou Reed Archive series, quickly and efficiently does away with those assumptions. These recordings, made alongside then-new friend and future Velvet Underground bandmate John Cale in May of 1965, are completely unlike any Lou we've heard before now.

Often sounding like a ratty Woody Guthrie (accompanied by Cale on guitar, harmonica and vocal harmonies), the takes are almost completely lacking the slouch and swagger would later come to define Reed's sound. Instead we have a bedroom folk record; complete with themes of longing, betrayal, God, and heartbreak. The then 23-year old runs through 10 songs (three of which would later become Velvets tracks, the rest unheard until now), originally recorded and mailed to himself as a form of cheap copyright claim.

The results offer not only a fascinating piece of the puzzle for Velvets obsessives, but an incredibly charming collection of scrappy folk songs in and of themself. For those looking though, the clues are there to be excavated. Lou and Cale's version of I'm Waiting For The Man, in this form a loose country crooner completely unlike the album take, is actually quite reminiscent of a version of the song The Velvet Underground would eventually come to play live (though my guy straight up yodels in this one, which did not make its way to the eventual live throwback version).

The previously unreleased 8 minute "Wrap You Troubles In Dreams" offers what is maybe the clearest through-line between this work and what Reed and Cale would later do in The Velvet Underground. A sparsely arranged dirge, and the only track featuring John Cale on vocals, it is a haunting creep of a song that slowly burrows its way into your brain and sticks with you long after it ends.

An absolutely fascinating document. If “Words & Music” is any indication of the revelatory calibre of future Lou Reed Archive entries, we all have a lot to be excited about.