The Velvet Underground
Album: White Light/White Heat (45th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
Label: Polydor/Universal
Tracks: 13+7
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground

Recorded in just a matter of days (in true "white heat") at the end of the summer of 1967, coming quite soon after the seminal The Velvet Underground & Nico album, White Light/White Heat seemed even more of a statement of attitude, and certainly nothing if not confrontational, both very much zeitgeist and uncompromising in almost every aspect. Its six tracks took to the very extremes of tolerance and listenability both the arty bohemian-noir experimentalism, and the punk noise and drones, the gritty, grinding, discordant, distorted feedback-drenched side of the music on the band's first LP, allowing for only one brief respite from the aural onslaught in the shape of the gentle ballad Here She Comes Now. As recently as August of this year, Lou Reed himself described the album as "the quintessence of articulated punk" and observed that "no-one goes near it", thereby summing up its even-now reputation for unapproachability, and this handsome new 45th anniversary edition affords us a timely opportunity to confirm that verdict and indeed re-examine our own previous assessment of its nature, quality and status. It's still an uncomfortable and often uneasy listen, but a hell of a rewarding one.

The full-on charge of the title number now comes across as almost too minimalist (in the proto-Ramones sense, I guess), even considering its hit-single timespan of under three minutes, while the finale Sister Ray extends the method to one clearly natural conclusion in a workout of mythic proportion. Between these two poles we encounter The Gift, a wild, erratic, enigmatic (and arguably not altogether successful) mix of sung and spoken delivery; the disturbing, mantra-like Lady Godiva's Operation; and the iconic I Heard Her Call My Name, notable among other things for its stinging, ahead-of-its-time guitar solo.

The 45th anniversary edition comes in two variants. On the two-disc deluxe edition, disc one gives us the stereo version of the original LP, freshly remastered and topped up with seven tracks' worth of "additional material" (an alternate take of I Heard Her Call My Name, and original mixes/early versions of other songs not on the WL/WH album itself such as Beginning To See The Light, the gentle Stephanie Says, Hey Mr. Rain and the comparatively throwaway Temptation Inside Your Heart). Disc two proudly presents the band live at The Gymnasium, NYC in April 1967, the (I guess) complete 59-minute set here receiving its first official release (five of the seven tracks having been culled from John Cale's personal copy of the tape). This live show fully justifies its legendary status, with its early version of Run Run Run unashamedly complementing the climactic close-on-19-minute rendition of Sister Ray, and the occasional pull-back fade during the set, or flaky moment or partial dropout (eg during Waiting For The Man) can be easily forgiven in the circumstances. The "super-deluxe" three-disc edition additionally provides (on disc three, sadly not supplied for review) the mono version of the LP plus a pair of single mixes of album tracks and previously unreleased instrumental and vocal versions of The Gift. Interestingly, the comparable disc of the earlier Velvets box-set Peel Slowly And See also included a further handful of roughly contemporaneous demos (Sheltered Life etc.) that don't appear on this anniversary edition; otherwise this new jobbie can be regarded as definitive, not least because of its superior remastered sound. It also sports a decent new booklet essay by Rolling Stone's David Fricke.

David Kidman