Lou Reed - The Bells

Three extraordinary songs

The 3 tracks All Through The Night, Families and The Bells are enough to make this a must-have. The first describes an all-night drunken party or pub crawl in stunning observations with trenchant imagery over a propulsive rhythm and a backdrop of bar crowd sounds. Co-written with Don Cherry (who contributes trumpet and African Hunting Guitar to the album), All Though The Night is an exploration of the "post natal" depression that follows the completion of a novel or an album, plus various other types of Weltschmerz.

Families is autobiographical and moving, with a line or two imploring his dad to let his sister manage the family business. The sound is dominated by electric guitars and guitar- and bass guitar synthesizers and the mood is mournful. The Bells itself is a breathtaking, majestic experience, something Reed has never done before or since. Hard to describe, perhaps it is his exploration of what Bowie did on Low in those atmospheric tracks like Warszawa, Art Decade, Weeping Wall, etc. but with more vocals. Dissonant, atmospheric and jazzy, the sound consists of a barely audible monologue under the wails and drones of the saxophones and gong sounds to create an eerie mood. The instrumenation builds up slowly while the vocals become audible and at its height, Reed repeats the line Here Come The Bells in a dramatic conclusion.

The others are short songs - Disco Mystic is an amusing comment on the disco fever of the late 70s, whilst I Want To Boogie With You is more sombre and serious. These fall in the disco commentary genre like Frank Zappa's Dancing Fool and Cristina Monet's Blame It On Disco on her Doll in the Box album, and as such are good, not great.

The Bells is an uneven album, but the aforementioned three exceptional songs merit the four stars. All Through The Night is a brilliant rock song with a lilting rhythm, Families is a slow, brooding piece whilst the title track is Reed at his experimental best. I recommend the album for all devoted fans, but not for newcomers to the world of Lou Reed. June 8, 2008

Wonderful

This is the single best work of rock jazz fusion ever and anyone who doesn't believe it hasn't suffered through Miles Davis' Jack Johnson. A wonderfully experimental masterpiece and an essential addition to any CD collection.

Also really weird cover with Lou looking more like Chaney than Reed.

Not much more to say, its not rock and roll and its not jazz and its not like anything much you've heard unless you've heard the early 70s Davis works....but it works and drills itself into your head. May 3, 2008

why does any one recongize Lou's genius

I'll tell you everything to sally cant dance to growing up
are just so musically great and hilarious.
Lou in some many songs is like falling apart with being stoned or raged or just plain humor. Im mean these are his best records. This is what makes Lou..Lou. Especially the mid late 70's Lou. How often do you listen to post blue mask Lou..........I dont February 24, 2008

Street poet meets jazzbo, with mixed results

I'm glad to see this album getting its due on CD...being new to Lou at the time it came out, I bought THE BELLS for one reason: Lou's knack for polarizing people, splitting 'em right down the middle (like Bob Dylan, or Neil Young, who've also gone through their own artistic peaks and valleys). I played "All Through The Night" for a friend weaned on Top 40, and he said, "Well, it sounds like he's sick," which only made me laugh: "Oh, well, this doesn't have 'big breakout hit' written all over it, does it?"

On that score, you'll either love this album or hate it, which doesn't bother hardcore fans like me, but proves to be a mixed outcome for the casual listener. The overall vibe is jazzy R&B, although the guitar does come up for air occasionally (notably on "Looking For Love," whose lyrics don't add up to much -- remember, this came during Lou's improv-is-everything approach to recording, and sounds like it).

Of the six shorter songs, it's the Reed-Lofgren collaborations that have worn best for me. "Stupid Man" and "With You" swing with an edge missing from many albums made during this era; in many ways, THE BELLS is a worthy showcase for saxophonist Marty Fogel, whose peers fare less well in the mix. "City Lights" is a nifty ode to Charlie Chaplin's exit from pop culture (and not too far removed sonically from Bebop Deluxe's "Surreal Estate").

That leaves a trio of clinkers, notably "Looking For Love" (which I've covered), and "I Want To Boogie With You," sunk by its sluggish tempo, submerged guitar and sketchy, nondescript lyrics...using the catchphrase of the day (i.e., "boogie") is the surest ticket to dating a song (imagine this being recorded with wah-wah and sitar in 1967 as "I Wanna Be Groovy With You"). "Disco Mystic" has some excellent sax from Fogel going for it, but little else (and, when you realize there's nine songs on this album, screams, "Look, Ma, short on material").

I preferred the trio of songs that graced side two of the old vinyl: "All Through The Night" is a pretty intense affair, from a lyric standpoint (bolstered by an unlikely horn hook from Fogel), and I always had fun trying to figure out what was being said in the overdubbed background chatter. "Families" has the best mix, sonically speaking, and works well as a retort to those ever-disapproving familial presences in Lou's life (I've always laughed about the line where he says, "Papa, I'm not getting married...and no, there's no grandson planned for you").

The nine-minute, sprawling title track closes out the album in truly grand, if inconclusive fashion: to those who have never heard it, I can only describe it as Gothic jazz...built around a three-note bass riff, Don Cherry's piercing trumpet, and beds of swirling keyboards from Michael Fonfara. I've dug it, though some tighter editing would have helped (even if its lyrical drift -- "It was really not so cute/To play without a parachute" -- is clear enough).

I appreciated this album's experimentalism, then and now, but I only wish it could have been mixed better: like most of Lou's output of the time, THE BELLS arrived in the clothes of "Stereo Binaural Sound," which he touted as a significant leap in sound quality. However, the overall sound is murky, and dense, which makes it tough going for the listener. As with many albums of this era, the guiding principle seemed to be: "If you can add it, overdub it," which doesn't always work out. For example, there's a fairly nifty rhythm guitar lick on "All Through The Night," but you'll have to work really hard to hear it. On other tracks, like "With You," it's the opposite problem...the instrumentation swamps the lyrics.

Overall, THE BELLS reads like an uneasy compromise between the quest for accessibility, which seems to have been the intent of the shorter tracks, and the "here's a riff, let's go for it" feel of the longer pieces ("Families," "The Bells"). Either way, it fell between two chairs: Arista didn't realize its goal of netting that ever-elusive hit, while longtime fans went back to TRANSFORMER, or CONEY ISLAND BABY, for solace. For all of those issues I've rattled off, however, the better tracks are worth the price of admission; as with GROWING UP IN PUBLIC, don't start here if you're new to the cause. July 22, 2006

an incredibly weak album that's largely unlistenable

The liner notes in Buddah's 2000 CD reissue of Lou Reed's 1979 album "The Bells" are thoughtful and excellently written, providing information about the album's recording, musicians Reed was using at the time, and a praise-packed critique of the album itself that also draws comparisons between it & other work in Reed's career. However, the lavish praise is laughable in light of the fact that this is an extremely weak, overwrought album that's only recommended to the most fanatical of Lou Reed fans. The liner notes say how this is the jazziest album Reed had recorded as of the time of writing, but really, this album is almost beyond classification, and I don't mean that as a compliment. One of the huge problems here is that Reed's vocals are gratingly piss-poor all over the place--both the show tune-style "Stupid Man" & the riffy "With You" have catchy backing tracks & could have been really good, but his rambling 'all-over-the-place' delivery on the former seems like a joke, & his 'nervous' vocal on the latter is thoroughly downright abysmal, not to mention ultra-grating. The somewhat R&B-flavored "Disco Mystic" is a repetitive vamp that's basically an instrumental plus the chant of "disco, disco mystic" running throughout; it does have kind of a cool atmosphere, but it begins to grind away at you--at 2 & 1/2 minutes, it would have been one thing, but at nearly 4 & 1/2, it ends up being exhausting & running itself into the ground, like beating a dead horse. The musical backing track on "All Through The Night" grooves along nicely and some of the lines in the lyrics are admittedly interesting, but it rambles on & on with weak lyrics & incredibly pompous Reed vocals--he piles a "party" on top of the track which is the exact same trick he'd previously used on "Kicks", and it sounds like it comes from the exact same "party" (if you compare you'll see what I mean); supposedly this makes "All Through The Night" more dramatic, but I see it as a lame-brained attempt to mask the deficiency of the tune itself. The super mellow "City Lights" gives you a break from all the chaos, but it's super dull. "Families" is another rambling tune that runs on for an exhausting 6 minutes with annoying, repetitive background vocals running throughout. The mind-bogglingly sluggish "I Want To Boogie With You" is a toss-off, & the Chuck Berry-style, sax-fortified rocker "Looking For Love" is annoying with Reed's 'macho' vocals. The album ends with the 9+ minute title track, & it does start off as a nice mood piece with a 3-note bass lick, synth, electric piano, trumpet, & spoken vocals buried in the mix, but it ultimately leads to Reed's 'improvised' sung part and a pompous chant near the end. In the end, this is indeed a heck of a mess of an album, and it sounds like Reed, who produced this album, was drugged out of his mind to the point where he had no sense of quality control. This album could have been good, but it's as if Reed was TRYING to make it annoying beyond all belief. You've got to be out of your mind to think that "The Bells" is even a good album, let alone a masterpiece. March 17, 2005

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