#271 The Best Album of 1989, Round 1 Match #31: Lou Reed vs. Tone Lōc
Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:
#21 Lou Reed, NEW YORK
vs.
#108 Tone Lōc, LŌC-ED AFTER DARK
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s from the newly-designated Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social, and it’s for NEW YORK! Take it away, Brian!
Over a multi-decade career, Lou Reed wrote a lot of songs and tried out a lot of different styles. He experimented with new recording technologies and put together combinations of producers/bands that sometimes didn’t make a lot of sense. But throughout all of that, his best stuff generally falls within a narrow sonic range. Like he says in the liner notes for NEW YORK: “You can’t beat 2 guitars, bass, drums.”
In the time between 1989 and now, not all of the lyrics on NEW YORK have held up (and some have taken on new meaning), but the music is as solid as anything Lou ever put to tape. He’s joined by Mike Rathke on 2nd guitar (with each guitar separated into its own stereo channel), Rob Wasserman on an unusual 6-string electric upright bass, and Fred Maher on drums (except for the 2 tracks where Moe Tucker does her inimitable percussion thing).
(NOTE: A reissue of the record has a full album live set from the NEW YORK tour—it’s a great listen!)
The band doesn’t sound like the Velvet Underground, even when Tucker is drumming, but it definitely sits along the through line the VU sketched out. Lou has some solos that nod in the direction of unhinged noise while being controlled by decades of post-Velvets experience. NEW YORK sounds great, and while it’s silly to ask a listener to ignore the lyrics on a Lou Reed record, in 2025 it’s at least worthwhile to focus on the playing and the sound as much as the songwriting.
Which, when it clicks into place, is great. There are some all-time Lou tracks here, and the opening triad of Romeo Had Juliet, Halloween Parade, and Dirty Blvd. is as good a run as Lou has on any record. (On the other hand, the later run of Beginning of a Great Adventure, Busload of Faith, Sick of You, Hold On, and Good Evening Mr. Waldheim make the record sag a bit.)
But whether he’s hitting the target or missing the mark, Lou is very much in his comfort zone throughout NEW YORK, looking around his city and trying to take account of what’s changed (and what hasn’t) while leading his band through the cityscape that comforts and challenges and enrages and saddens and inspires and energizes him.
The record ends with Dime Store Mystery, which should get some extra attention. One of the NYC institutions that had recently changed was Andy Warhol, who’d died in 1987. Moe is drumming here, and it’s appropriately the most Velvety thing on the album. But it’s not nostalgic—Lou places himself in the present and works through his adult feelings about his former mentor and creative partner/antagonist. I think it’s worth looking at the lyrics that close out the song as the music modulates in a familiar VU way:
I was sitting drumming thinking thumping pondering the Mysteries of Life
Outside the city shrieking screaming whispering the Mysteries of Life
There's a funeral tomorrow at St. Patrick's the bells will ring for you
Ah, what must you have been thinking when you realized the time had come for you
I wish I hadn't thrown away my time on so much Human and so much less Divine
The end of the Last Temptation
The end of a Dime Store Mystery
It’s complex and messily human stuff—and it’s a preamble to his next project, the album-length Warhol memorial he’d record with John Cale, SONGS FOR DRELLA.
NEW YORK isn’t Lou’s best album, and it doesn’t eclipse his VU records. But it’s a very good record that’s occasionally great, and it’s built on rock & roll music you can’t beat.
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Thanks, and hope you had a terrific holiday weekend, wherever you may be!
Kent