Original released on LP Verve V6 5008
(US 1967, March 12)
A singer who'd previously been jobbing as a songwriter for a record label so renowned for its small-budget copycat recordings that Les McQueen's Creme Brulee were signed to them in The League of Gentlemen. A drummer that makes Meg White looks like John Bonham. An actress and model with a voice so offputting that over 40 years later, even with our knowledge of Perry Farrell and Fred Durst and Neil Young and Alec Ounsworth and whoever the hell else, some still find her voice offputting. A viola player who had studied with such populist, rockist figures as LaMonte Young and John Cage. A debut recording constructed almost entirely of feedback, with a locked groove, that people now consider a precedent to industrial music. A manager who was mostly famous for painting a can of soup. How on earth did they become the most influential rock band of all time? Lord knows, but that's the facts. Every time a band wants to make some noise, the Velvets are there. Every time somebody specifically sets out to have simple drumming, the Velvets are there. Every time a pervert grabs a microphone, the Velvets are there. Every time somebody confronts their audience with any remotely unusual ideas about gender roles, the Velvets are there. Every time somebody sings an unambiguous song about drugs, the Velvets are there. Every time a rock band imagines themselves as an idiosyncratic cult act rather than as cookie-cutter megastars, the Velvets are there.
Most of music's most notable innovators since - David Bowie, Public Enemy, Patti Smith, Slint, The Stooges, Suicide, Talking Heads, King Crimson, Pixies, R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Joy Division, Can, John Zorn, Brian Eno, even bloody Burzum - owe them something. It really is astonishing what this album started. The simplest explanation is that the Velvets sang about dirty drugs and dirtier sex, and that's ultimately what everybody wants from rock music. The truest, however, is that it's just an incredible album. To this day it holds the power to shock and enthrall. Has anybody ever truly written a song like "Venus in Furs" since? And have they put it on an album that also has a love song as sweet, sincere, and unpretentious as "I'll Be Your Mirror"? How about following up a ballad as woozy and lazy as "Sunday Morning" with a rock'n'roll anthem about hooking up with your dealer? Then there's the necessary ballast provided by the solid, driving rock'n'roll of "Run Run Run" and "There She Goes Again"; songs that are perennially under-rated in the way that they make this an album, and render its visions complete - without these obviously 'rock' structures, a generation of listeners might not have considered that the subject matter of songs like "Heroin" could be placed into them, and without this kind of subtle innovation to go alongside the brutal leaps forward of "The Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son", the album might simply have disappeared. Yet it didn't, this album still slays millions and attracts a new fan base each year. Indefatigably awesome. (in RateYourMusic)
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