Coney Island Baby

All Music Guide4颗半星经典推荐、Pitchforkmedia 8.5高评致敬 Lou Reed歌唱生涯继Transformer后的另一高峰杰作 Lou Reed在1975年发行了Metal Machine Music，一张像是收集纽约巴士总站里的噪音的唱片。结果殷切期盼的歌迷听后无不掩耳，而那些过去死忠吹捧Lou Reed的乐评听后则摇头怒骂。发行才3周就被所有的唱片行下架，退货塞爆RCA的仓库。Lou Reed被人告上法院，欠了经理人、律师、乐手一屁股债。在没钱发饷的窘况下，他的Roadie把他的吉他拿去抵薪。面临事业低潮之际，RCA唱片总裁Ken Glancy伸出援手。他说：你保证不会再做出另一张Metal Machine Music的唱片了吧？Lou回答：不会了。Ken Glancy让Lou Reed住进Gramercy Park Hotel，碰巧Bob Dylan的The Rolling Thunder Revue巡回乐团也住在那里，准备盛大的全美巡回演唱，而他只能窝在旅馆，哪里都去不了。一天，Ken Glancy来电，叫他选一间录音室，就这样，Lou Reed录下Coney Island Baby。 Coney Island Baby是Lou Reed第6张个人录音专辑，经历上一张专辑Metal Machine Music的惨败后，回归摇滚乐本质的一张经典作品。整张专辑不脱其一贯自我剖析笔触，狂野的电吉他依旧是Lou Reed的签名式风格。第一首Crazy Feeling轻松写意的吉他滑弦音与那些装饰音的钟声，让人几乎忘记了那个不久前大玩吉他反馈的音乐狂人。所谓Crazy Feeling，或许是对Metal Machine Music的挫败后的自我解嘲。整张专辑8首歌曲时而欢欣不羁，时而低吟奋唱。像是Kicks的随性风格、She’s My Best Friend高潮迭起的电吉他演奏，经典时刻的Coney Island Baby，Lou Reed漫不经心的唱歌方式，让每首歌听来像是密友私语般直捣人心。总之，Metal Machine Music的前卫，Coney Island Baby的悦耳，这就是Lou Reed的风格所献给世界最美好的摇滚乐。 by Mark Deming From 1972's Transformer onward, Lou Reed spent most of the '70s playing the druggy decadence card for all it was worth, with increasingly mixed results. But on 1976's Coney Island Baby, Reed's songwriting began to move into warmer, more compassionate territory, and the result was his most approachable album since Loaded. On most of the tracks, Reed stripped his band back down to guitar, bass, and drums, and the results were both leaner and a lot more comfortable than the leaden over-production of Sally Can't Dance or Berlin. "Crazy Feeling," "She's My Best Friend," and "Coney Island Baby" found Reed actually writing recognizable love songs for a change, and while Reed pursued his traditional interest in the underside of the hipster's life on "Charlie's Girl" and "Nobody's Business," he did so with a breezy, freewheeling air that was truly a relief after the lethargic tone of Sally Can't Dance. "Kicks" used an audio-tape collage to generate atmospheric tension that gave its tale of drugs and death a chilling quality that was far more effective than his usual blasé take on the subject, and "Coney Island Baby" was the polar opposite, a song about love and regret that was as sincere and heart-tugging as anything the man has ever recorded. Coney Island Baby sounds casual on the surface, but emotionally it's as compelling as anything Lou Reed released in the 1970s, and proved he could write about real people with recognizable emotions as well as anyone in rock music -- something you might not have guessed from most of the solo albums that preceded it.