This album has gained a strange status. Through a combination of Metallica’s hysteria re:downloading and Lou Reed’s general reluctance to talk to the press with any degree of civility, Lulu has taken on mythic proportions, known by the public but not heard. This has been compounded by press clamour to see who can be the most pithy in their denunciations. Before people have even listened to the album it has been forecast as a grotesque carbuncle on the face of music. Television appearances have done little to dispel this as versions of The Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light, White Heat’ have been derisory and the scant Lulu material played which has drawn from the hard rocking, less congruent, parts of the album. Compounding this, ‘The View’ was partially released on YouTube, one of the worst songs on the album. Unfortunately this album is, on the whole, an oozing pustule, infected and pulsing to a vascular metal backbeat, but it has moments where Reed and Metallica do actually complement each other. They seem to enjoy the ugliness of the album, or at least they wilfully indulge the ugliness, but the character Lulu is dark and has an unhinged streak, lusting on rage. A second significance of this album may not be in the listening; instead what Lulu sheds light on is the constant drive for Lou Reed to say "fuck you" to pretty much everyone - but I expect this time it is music journalists, his long-time adversaries, that he is messing with using such a defiant collaboration. Then, of course, the album is vaguely listenable due to Lou Reed’s lyrics, which may not be at their most profound or interesting on this album but they're still exponentially more interesting than most. Indeed, intermittently, Metallica have their moments too.
The opening chords of ‘Brandenburg Gate’ and its first passage evokes a track from Berlin, with the ringing atonal drone from ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ gone tonal. This raises expectations unfairly, as they are then rapidly diluted by the idiotic thrashing of Metallica and the semi-devolved steroidal species that is James Hetfield repeatedly shouting "small town guuhrrrll", removing any level of subtlety from the song. Lyrically, Reed is characteristically intelligent in his reprisal of an enduring leitmotif in his music, observations of a young woman – or a young man aspiring to be a woman – entering an electrically charged urban space of possibilities, especially with the return of Berlin, a key crucible of modernity with its conflicts, neuroses and contradictions, that has often been his muse. This helps Reed carry the album, as the only real benefit of Metallica’s involvement – when they let loose and are not simply providing atmospheric beds, it's as if Reed has forced them perform in a more avant-garde manner – is their car-chasing-dog-propulsion which obliges Reed to push his lyrics on top of each other like a raging beat poet. Unfortunately the more formulaic Metallica backing that pervades parts of the album is grinding and mitigates any sustained enjoyment; you're left anticipating when they will arbitrarily throw in some drive-time heaviness to ruin a song, just to please their hordes of flyover state and Euro metalhead believers. Maybe that is the true common ground between Reed and Metallica... black t-shirts for fans and band alike.
Nevertheless, there are instances where Reed and Metallica eschew red-meat rawk and become able partners in making disturbing music. In between the Beavis and Butthead fantasy riffage on ‘Frustration’ there is a passage of horror music avant-garde scratching more akin to modern noise music, like the more discordant aspects My Cat is an Alien or Theoretical Girls style No Wave. ‘Little Dog’ also reprises this trick with feedback and harmonics brewing, but Lars Ullrich had obviously had too little attention spent on him, and feels the need to include clichéd prog-rock cymbal swells. The last part of the otherwise poor ‘Pumping Blood’ even had an entertaining Metallica take on ‘Sister Ray’ type uproar. The quality may vary wildly within a single track thanks to mostly Metallica, albeit that Reed is not completely innocent. Yet on all these tracks Reed is particularly threatening - on ‘Frustration’ he covers themes of (of course) frustration, being "spermless like a girl", whatever that means, hate and murder, so at least Metallica have helped channel his dark side. It is practically psychotic. Any prolonged time with the so-called gods of metal, however - widely considered and publically documented as arseholes (especially Ullrich) – would probably turn a less nonchalant or passive aggressive figure than Reed to literal rather than literary murder.
There are times when it goes really wrong though. The less said about ‘Cheat On Me’ the better - eleven and a half minutes of terror, bad terror - and ‘The View’ is also poor due to Hetfield’s unchecked ego-tripping. ‘Dragon’ is not Reed at his best, and seems to be driven by Kirk Hammett controlling feedback with a volume pedal. I can see how Metallica are trying to recreate the Velvet Underground’s sound with an opiated upsurge of harmonics and an occasionally Reed-thrashed guitar, nodding towards ‘Black Angel’s Death Song’, but Hammett is no John Cale, and he's using (correct me if I’m wrong) digital equipment that does not allow for the accidental tones that older analogue equipment allows. ‘Dragon’ then turns into what seems like The Foo Fighters covering a so-so Sonic Youth B-side, perhaps ‘Helen Lundeberg’. Yet when a song goes wrong on the album, Reed is sometimes culpable, for instance on ‘Mistress Dread’ Metallica are actually quite amazing, performing the unruly thrash they peddled in the '80s, but Reed sings like he is having a stroke.
This album is not as bad as people have said. If James Hetfield’s voice was eradicated from the mix it could be better. It is a worthwhile and thought-provoking collaboration worth a listen just out of curiosity. You may even be surprised when you go native and start (briefly) enjoying it.