From the Random thread:
What would you recommend there? I've heard Transformer, Berlin, and Coney Island Baby. Not sure where to go next.
Definitely Street Hassle. The title track is probably his best solo song.
Definitely New York or his album with John Cale, Songs for Drella.
New York is also great, yeah. Song-wise maybe even more consistent than Street Hassle, although SH is essential for the title track. I Wanna Be Black sums Lou up in three minutes. The man simply didn't give a fuck.
Lou's Between Thought And Expression was the first box set I ever bought, and aside from Iron Maiden
reject
he may have been the first artist whose backcatalog I explored with the intention of checking out everything (Dylan came a bit later). And like Dylan, even when the albums weren't phenomenal you could count on a handful of exceptional tracks.
Anyway, Street Hassle's title track is up there near the top of his output, but the album itself is uneven. New York is certainly a consistent high point in terms of writing. But I can't imagine anyone familiar with Lou's discography recommending either before The Blue Mask, which is an extremely personal album, dealing with childhood, his marriage, addiction, and his mentor Delmore Schwartz. And the music is out of this world, Lou sharing guitar duties with the great Robert Quine. There might not be a better LR album guitar-wise.
5 Stars from Rolling Stone:
Lou Reed: The Blue Mask : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone
and a very enthusiastic one from Christgau:
The Blue Mask [RCA Victor, 1982]
After this becomes a cult classic, in a week or so, noncultists are gonna start complaining. "My Dedalus to your Bloom/Was such a perfect wit"? And then bringing in "perfect" again for a rhyme? What kind of "spirit of pure poetry" is that? One that honors the way people really talk. Never has Lou sounded more Ginsbergian, more let-it-all-hang-out than on this, his most controlled, plainspoken, deeply felt, and uninhibited album. Even his unnecessarily ideological heterosexuality is more an expression of mood than a statement of policy; he sounds glad to be alive, so that horror and pain become occasions for courage and eloquence as well as bitterness and sarcasm. Every song comes at the world from a slightly different angle, and every one makes the others stronger. Reed's voice--precise, conversational, stirring whether offhand or inspirational--sings his love of language itself, with Fernando Saunders's bass articulating his tenderness and the guitars of Robert Quine and Reed himself slashing out with an anger he understands better all the time. A
I also highly recommend the late-period Set The Twilight Reeling, which is probably his second-best guitar album, but this time he's playing everything himself. To say that it's drenched in feedback is an understatement. And while it mostly kicks ass, there's also some tender stuff in there as well, like his tribute to the recently-deceased Sterling Morrison.