Pitchfork

Okay, so listening to a 90s Lou Reed performance isn't quite as horrific as being subjected to 90s Van Morrison, but it's still pretty sad. Let's lay bare the biases: The Velvet Underground are the shit, and Reed's Transformer is glorious, but almost everything he's produced since has been second-rate. And yet, I was really hoping Perfect Night, which draws from some of Reed's most popular solo work ("Perfect Day", "Vicious", "Dirty Blvd."), would be a charged affair to remember.

Then I read the liner notes. Reed bought an expensive acoustic guitar, plugged it into an amp and "feedbucker" (a box that eliminates feedback), and used it for this gig at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Well, eliminate feedback he did. Sometimes the audience doesn't recognize songs until halfway through the first verse, and sometimes they aren't even sure when the songs are over. Is it because they're Brits? Have they fallen asleep? Give the disc a listen, and you won't notice as the songs breeze by, either.

In contrast to the classic 1969 Velvet Underground Live album, where Reed and his pals expand on hooks and grooves to give brilliant reinterpretations of the material, all the tunes here are pale imitations of the originals. The majority of the tracks here will go unnoticed as you clean up your room, reply to old emails, or take a nap. "Busload of Faith", "Coney Island Baby", and "New Sensations" deserve special mention for the band's insipid substitution of turning up for turning on, and vocally, Reed is into these tunes about as much as a sports announcer gets into pitching ads during commercial breaks.

When it comes down to it, Perfect Night is only as good as the players: Three studio hacks and one awkwardly aging rock legend. If, as Reed notes in his thank you's, this is "the band that played as one," then I guess the best we can hope for is a collective retirement.