1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 145. The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground (1969)

 

John Cale is out, replaced by Doug Yule. From the opening track Candy Says, a mellow track about transgender Candy Darling, we get the sense that this is the Velvet Underground in their laid-back style; no tracks on here in the grindcore electric of White Light/White Heat.

And although some of the tracks continue to touch on existential dread, they are overall lighter in tone, about the Pale Blue Eyes of a beloved, or matters of faith. Yule sings the opening track, and there’s a rare vocal performance from drummer Maureen Tucker on After Hours, which apparently she was super self-conscious about doing.

There’s one track, The Murder Mystery, that touches on the experimentalism of previous albums, with all four band members providing a kind of spoken word accompaniment, two on each side of the stereo, about a murder mystery. It’s kind of like the disparate strands of a narrative all overlaid, implying how the truth of a matter requires several viewpoints and, to me, demonstrating how those viewpoints can obscure each other. It was an intriguing listen but I’m glad it was a one-off.

I missed having the grungier tracks as well, which like the first Velvet Underground album (with Nico) gave I some good variety, but this is all pleasant enough.