JOHN CALE & LOU REED: SONGS FOR DRELLA

This, to me, is not a prog album. I don't see it is a Jon Cale album, either. It might be both, technically, but it's not the best way to describe it. What this really is is a typical Lou Reed album made special by John Cale taking the place of the rest of the band with his beautiful piano and viola. So how you feel about this album depends on how you feel about Lou Reed in general. Personally, I'm a big fan of both.

So what's a typical Lou Reed album like, then? First, musically it's driven by the vocals of Reed. Second, it has a depth of feeling which is driven by the lyrics. So, like a regular pop album, then? Sure, except for a raw sound and much greater breadth and depth of feeling. But what I think truly sets Reed's emotionality apart is the detail. Your typical pop love song is emotional when it talks about this or that girl. But the songs are usually vague about the details, so that it could be a song about any girl. It could be a song about YOUR girl (which I think is the whole point). The end result is generic feeling.

When Reed talks about something, however, (and you know it's not going to be love) there's plenty of detail. That's what makes it feel real. When he sings in Dirt from Street Hassle about how he despises a person, you get the feeling this is a very specific person, even if you don't know his name. When he sings about a friend fighting cancer in the first track of Magic and Loss, you know this is a very real, specific friend. Even when he talks about something as trivial as one of his favorite beverages from youth in Set the Twilight Reeling, you get all the details down to the bloody address and price of the damn thing.

And that's exactly what you get in this album. This is not simply an album about missing someone or even the regret of things left unsaid. This is about the very personal, specific relationship between Reed and Andy Warhol. And by the time it's all over, not only do you feel as if you'd met the man himself, from how he made it big to what he believed in, and you feel like a fly in the wall when Reed quarreled with Warhol and fired him, among other things. Reed's gift is so special in this regard that you even feel as if you'd been there sharing Warhol's decline into death with him as it happened.

Which is why the last track deserves a special shout out. After the obvious pain of Andy's death on A Dream, Forever Changed comes charging along with Cale on vocals with a song about transformation to close out the album (Hello It's Me is like an epilogue). For some reason I always picture the last scene from Blade Runner, with Deckard and the girl escaping the city, when I listen to it. I find it very moving, but exciting at the same time, as if it weren't a song about endings, but about beginnings.

All in all, a perfect five-star non-prog Lou Reed album with a big shout out to John Cale, who gives a unique flavor to this otherwise typical, perfect Lou Reed album.