Pitchfork

Indulge in some stereotypes with me. We have Colombian coffee, Cuban cigars, Japanese lanterns, Canadian geese, Russian roulette, Greek gods, Portuguese sweet bread, Spanish fly, the Brazilian bikini wax, and Danish danish... es. Copenhagen's master bakers quietly but diligently ship confections bearing their country's namesake to coffee shops and bakeries around the world every morning-- but don't let their modesty fool you. Two of Denmark's larger exports are costume Viking hats and those dirty pens that reveal naked ladies when you turn them upside down.

I was in Copenhagen for eight hours once, and as far as I could tell, the Danes ride free city bikes and drink beer in street cafes all day. The six-year old girls all looked punk rock. Grueling winters of short days and long nights drive teens into their basements where they consume vodka and listen to death metal and industrial music. Sure, that happens in New Jersey, too, but Lou Reed's Ecstasy hasn't cracked the Top 20 there. It has in Denmark.

Amazon customers who bought Ecstasy also purchased recent releases by aging rock legends including Patti Smith's Gung Ho, Neil Young's Silver and Gold, and Marianne Faithfull's Vagabond Ways. I'm assuming that this demographic rocked out to Lou's earlier work only to find their shoulders "car dancing" to the irritating swagger of horns in Huey Lewis & The News' "It's Hip to be Square" several years later. This progression adequately prepared them for Ecstasy's careful studio mix of familiar-sounding riff-based rock songs and brass explosions. But before you can say "adult contemporary," Reed sings, "Not if I wrap myself in nylon/ A piece of duct tape down my back," pairing his casual and cool vocal execution with lyrics concerning the paranoia and masochism which can lurk in a passionate marriage.

While Ecstasy is essentially a concept album about the fantasies and realities of love and family, it includes as much sex, drugs, and rock n' roll culture as any of Reed's earlier work. Sadly, the stubborn confidence of his once naïve voice has now disappeared. But at this stage in the game, no one's doubting that Reed has paid his dues on the wildside, allowing him to devote more explicit attention to the themes of helplessness and vulnerability his songs have always touched on. If some of the poetry is lost in this translation across decades, it's still a richly textured document that adds a few pages to the biography of a rock legend.

As a huge Velvet Underground fan and a slow learner, I've maintained an unhealthy curiosity in Reed's recent output, and Ecstasy is certainly an easier listen than any material Reed wrote in 90s, let alone Moe Tucker's Dogs Under Stress or John Cale's Walking on Locusts. But of course, the disc is bogged down by endlessly mundane material. I remember the first time I heard "The Black Angel's Death Song". The recording might have been 15 years old, but I'd never experienced anything like the demonic seesaws of its electric viola feedback. Cale's screeching bow broke the veneer of disinterest in Reed's cadenced and schizophrenic lyrical poetry. The old VU classic still hasn't lost its odd thrill, but employing it as a comparison to Ecstasy's "Like a Possum", a similar attempt to pair a long poem with off-kilter sound collage, pushes "the possum" into the category of "the unbearable."

However, you don't need any sort of attachment to "The Black Angel's Death Song" to find its bloated, extended relative unbearable. "Like a Possum" begins: "Good morning, it's Possum Day/ Feel like a possum in every way/ Like a possum/ Possum whiskers, possum face/ Like a Possum." The song continues through more than a quarter-hour's worth of tragico-absurdist lyrics that Lou speak-sings over a sloppy pastiche of slightly dissonant electric guitar and slow washes of fuzz bass, until it somehow makes its way to, "Shooting and coming 'til it hurts/ O, holy morning/ Calm as an angel." Equally cringe-inducing is the rockin' "Future Farmers of America"-- an overwritten piece of commentary on race relations that sounds like Reed's best approximation of a young Jon Cougar.

If Marianne Faithfull's latest brings her Vagabond Ways to an adult-contemporary audience, Reed takes his old vagabond ways and places them into that audience's living rooms to mingle with the lingering fantasies that might be interfering with their troubled marriages. His limited vocal range, which has always straddled the line between singing and speaking, maintains its uncanny ability to compel you to listen to his stories. It's just that those stories now belong to a 58-year old. This might explain the cover photo, which doubles as a shot of a man in "ecstasy" and a Bayer ad. Lou's eyes are closed, his lips are parted, and his head is thrown back while a red laser darts through his neck. I can't imagine what's going on here. Regardless, the Danes are still listening, and for a few more rotations, so am I.