Track Listing
1. Paranoia Key of E
2. Mystic Child
3. Mad
4. Ecstasy
5. Modern Dance
6. Tatters
7. Future Farmers of America
8. Turning Time Around
9. White Prism
10. Rock Minuet
11. Baton Rouge
12. Like a Possum
13. Rouge
14. Big Sky
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Fernando Saunders, Laurie Anderson | | Producer: | Hal Willner, Lou Reed | | Distributor: | WEA (Distributor) | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Lou Reed (vocals, guitar, percussion); Mike Rathke (guitar); Laurie Anderson (electric violin); Jane Scarpantoni (cello); Doug Wieselman (tenor & baritone saxophones); Paul Shapiro (tenor saxophone); Steve Bernstein (trumpet); Fernando Saunders (bass, background vocals); Tony "Thunder" Smith (drums, percussion, background vocals); Don Alias (percussion).
Recorded at Sear Sound, New York, New York.
Lou Reed's first album of the 2000 decade is one of the strongest efforts of his solo career--an unflinching, plain-spoken meditation on jealousy, lust, and the general state of affairs between men and women. ECSTASY sounds like vintage Lou. The bass, drums and guitar are there, but the songs are unfailingly catchy, stylistically varied (the title song is a bossa nova) and more harmonically sophisticated than usual. The extra instrumental touches around the edges--'60s soul horns on "Tatters," Laurie Anderson's electric violin on "Mad"--register with maximum impact. Velvet Underground fans will be delighted to hear that the album's centerpiece, "Like a Possum," is an 18-minute, two-chord fuzz guitar work out; it's probably the most extreme thing Reed's recorded since the original "Sister Ray" on WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT. A triumph.
Editorial Reviews
Included in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of 2000.
Rolling Stone (01/04/2001)
4 stars out of 5 - ...His strongest music ever....impressive. Dominated emotionally by dark songs about extreme sex and relationships gone sour....a complex, musically gorgeous synthesis of the obsessions that powered BERLIN and his great marriage albums of the early '80s...
Rolling Stone (04/13/2000)
...It's slick....[It] is definitely a record for Lou Reed fans. If you're a happy regular shopper at Lou's Boutique, this one'll fit nicely on the shelf alongside all the others...
Mojo (04/01/2000)
4 out of 5 - ...It's good....[it] says an awful lot. More, in fact, than Lou's said in 10 years.
Alternative Press (05/01/2000)
...Indispensable for...the album's monstrous 18 minute masterpiece, 'Like A Possum', alone....the album has other strong moments as well...
The Wire (05/01/2000)
7 out of 10 - ...Full of viciousness and confusion, another wrathful passage from the greatest-living curmudgeon in rock. Bless him.
NME (04/15/2000)
...This 'sounds' good....stripped-down, with a lot of guitar, bass and drums and a very judicious use of cellos, tenor saxes and an electric violin....Reed rarely sounds less than sincere...
CMJ (05/01/2000)
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