Lou Reed: NYC Man

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * * )

Even Reed's long-term faithful still haven't stopped laughing after this year's grand folly, his theatrical musical homage to Edgar Allan Poe The Raven. A track from it, Who Am I, starts this double CD 31-track retrospective overseen by Reed.

Thankfully, though, it's just a throat-clearing exercise before we find out that, mostly, Reed is in agreement with his following about which bits of his songbook deserve reframing here.

It's not chronological and you might puzzle at the versions of his most notorious songs (Heroin, for example is from 1984's ropy Live in Italy) but as it jumps from a few Velvet Underground recordings to four songs from his solo peak Transformer to one or two each from most of his subsequent albums, it's still engagingly cohesive.

The title to this, though a track from 1996's Set the Twilight Reeling, also echoes his last great solo effort, New York of 1989. That might seem a none-too-subtle reminder of Reed's past glories and an attempt to claim back the job of the Big Apple's rocker laureate after all the post 9/11 rhapsodising. Fortunately, what's inside delivers the essential Reed, even with a couple of non-essentials (I Want to be Black which starts disc two especially) the inclusion of which can only be blamed on Uncle Lou's cantankerous New York state of mind.

(BMG)