White Light/White Heat

This is basically a 4 for me as a certified 60s and noise rock hater. Sometimes you really do have to respect some innovation, a quality of this band that does become very apparent after listening to enough 60slop. While I have no hate towards the album, and even think it has some really cool ideas, sonically it's not something I vibe with enough to listen to on my own.

Standouts: White Light/White Heat • The Gift • Sister Ray

I don’t love Lady Godiva’s Operation but this album is still a five. VU at their most experimental and its influence is written all over tons of music that came after it. It sounds like nothing else from the time and still sounds innovative today.

Absolutely wild album. Pretty difficult to listen to in places, but you can't deny how influential this was on experimental and alternative music to come. Not something I would listen to often, but I think everyone should give it a go at least once! After the VU/Nico album of course.

The Velvet Underground will forever be that band that people like because it's "different" or "groundbreaking." It's straight ass. It's so fucking garbage. I wanna blow my fucking ears in after hearing the first few songs on the album. It actually hurts my ears. Straight brainless noise, and pretentious people can't convince me it's good or purposeful like genuinely shut the fuck up. Silver Ray's alright but it's still unnecessarily long like we get it. The opening track isn't too bad, but the rest of the album is completely unbearable. This is probably the worst album I've ever heard.

This album deserves the acclaim of the funny banana album. Absolutely boundary-pushing (as you can see from the other reviews), noisy, chaotic. Even by modern standards it's still an insane album.

I found this album to be a really tough and sometimes hard to listen to. I know it’s said to be a "groundbreaking" or "influential" step before punk and noise rock, but that didn’t make it any easier to enjoy. It felt like my ears were being attacked, with rough distortion, unclear sounds, and a clear disregard for regular melodies. From the startling, panned words in “The Gift” to the intense 17-minute instrumental cacophony of “Sister Ray”, it felt like the whole album was just trying to push boundaries.

In the end, all the noise and confusion were too much, I found the harshness to be physically tiring and the lack of connection confusing. It’s an interesting piece of history, but as music, it’s something I don’t want to listen to again.

Some great stuff on here, it seems for me a lot of the Velvet Underground albums are 50/50. Half I really like and half I'm not quite sure about.

Released in between two largely accessible, high fidelity recordings, White Light/White Heat is the anomaly in The Velvet Underground’s studio album catalogue. To see what they were going for with this release I think you need to look ahead a couple of years to their 1969 Velvet Underground Live album which shows the electric clarity that could be achieved through capturing the band on tour, balancing the guttural feel of their semi-improvised performance with a crisp, clear sound. When attempted in these rushed recordings in 1967 the band overwhelmed the equipment with noise and it led to a very distorted end result, the compositions are immense but little would be lost if you listened to them through a tin can. The band were disappointed with the results, and (unpopular opinion amongst fellow fans) I also think they would have benefitted from a bit more time, but what we’re left with is a welcome time piece which could not be more different from VU’s other output.

Fans of this record can quite rightly point to the fact that the band are delivering an early form of noise rock and punk, putting them well ahead of their time. It is for this reason that it's such a well regarded album, though I would personally put LP1, LP3 and the aforementioned live album well ahead of this.

Allegedly musical geniuses at work…..

I guess the fact that it’s just noise and distortion is the point, but it makes for an unlikeable & unlistenable mess.

Can see in the year it was released that it was perhaps way ahead of punk and can be revered as such.

But it’s definitely nothing I would choose to play again.

2

Een soort lange advertentie voor hallucinogenen.

This project is saving my money - I’m no longer compelled to by “great” albums on reputation .

Experimentdul . It’s like giving a bunch or art students recording equipment and hoping for the best -an avant- garden version of the 1 million monkeys experiment

verryr, experimental. I mean the album begins in the middle of a song.

As someone who loves Lou Reeds solo work so much - you can see the origins of it here way more than Nico.

And look I get it. No one is gonna listen to The Gift more than once - but still feels so important for me what rock and roll could be.

I think I’d pass on this one again. Not terrible, but not that interesting or enjoyable. 2/5

Die Frage ist nicht, ob die Katze beim Hören gestorben ist – sondern ob es Gnade war.
Dieses Album klingt, als hätte jemand Feedback zur Kunstform erklärt und vergessen, wieder aufzuräumen. Verzerrung, Dissonanz, ein 17-minütiger Krach-Monolith namens „Sister Ray“, der klingt wie ein Stromausfall im Irrenhaus.

Die Künstler wollten Noise – sie haben ihn bekommen. Avantgarde? Vielleicht. Hörbar? Kaum. Am Ende bleibt nur Stille. Und die klingt plötzlich wie Mozart.

I didn't mind the seventeen-minute final track, but side one was pretty terrible; some laughably bad bits - like Lou Reed coming in loudly on the final words like a demented Beastie Boy. The production on this is not great; you can barely hear the drums.

Love this album. The Velvets in full noisy chaotic mode, but still managing to produce some memorable tunes along the way. Definitely a big influence on a bunch of my fav 90s bands. Recommended highly!!!

The problem is, I have to actually listen to it.

The weakest of their albums (Squeeze doesn't count), but still good. The title track is an all-timer.

3.5/5

Albums like this expand my musical world, and it's straight up just noisy hedonism. "The Gift" was super grisly.