White Light/White Heat

It is honestly wild to me that something this atonal and experimental was from '68

Cool album, though not quite as listenable as Velvet Underground & Nico. These guys were real pioneers, and Sister Ray in particular feels like a song way ahead of its time.

Favourite track: Sister Ray

What an insanely unpleasant album. Not one redeeming quality.

noise rock as vezes spokenword lo-fizera em 68. não tem jeito, eh mta doideira como essa banda tava uns 25 anos adiantados.

todas pedradas MÁXIMAS, até as menos barulhentas. só não dou 5 estrelas porque acho 17 minutos de música demais quando vc está sóbrio (infelizmente eh o caso no momento)

Гурт і саунд які вплинули просто на безліч інших виконавців. Дуже стильно все. Класика.

This is a very garagey sounding rock album with lots of distortion and strange song structures. The poor production does a number on the album's enjoyability, which would be aided significantly by a louder mix. That said, it's still a good and interesting album.

The best VU album. Although it feels like they are mocking the inspirational material (Hendrix, doo-wop, etc) sometimes. And yes, very disturbing.

Can only imagine how much better this album would be with plenty of drugs and liberal nubile hippy chicks available.

Sadly I am too much of a square to ever truly appreciate this album

BIG YIKES

I loved their self titled album and gave it a 5. That was my first time listening to the band. So imagine my excitement when I saw another album of theirs!

First song was so good, loved it. Then the rest of the songs had horrible screeching guitar noises?! Ruined!

"She's busy sucking on my ding dong" was my final straw lmao. What the fuck was this

2 ⭐️

I don't like it, but I respect its influence. It just sounds old, and kind of outdated, you know? You can definitely see the bones of what punk tock became. Sister Ray starts out pretty decent, but 17 minutes is too damned long.

God I love John Cale.

Saw old mate play the most futuristic version of Sister Ray in the Barbican while drones were flying around the theatre. Incredible.

Imagine not wanting to listen to all 17 mins of Sister Ray. Longer versions are available.

Lou is also an OK guy I guess.

1968! It's easy to think that better/wilder experimental music was happening then... I'd love to hear some examples.

vuče me prema četvorci, premda mi je zadnja pjesma bila dosta zamorna. jako dobro, neobično

No sé si darle 1 o 2 estrellas. Bastante insufrible, no sé que tuvo de especial en su momento y tampoco me he parado a escuchar las letras, pero esto no es imprescindible. El tema final de ruido durante más de 17 minutos me supera, en vista de que 1 estrella es solo para lo realmente malo lo dejo en 2.

I don't really like it.

yeah the list already had 2 VU albums, absolutely no need for this one..

way too experimental, and not of the good kind.

I’m at a 5.

Words escape me here – that was a 40 minute ride through some noisy, controlled chaos, and I loved basically everything about it. There’s a chance I’m gaslighting myself into liking another “artsy” album just for being different, but in this case, I think there’s a genuine case to be made in calling this a progenitor of heavy metal, shoegaze, industrial, & punk rock. For 1968, going all in on using feedback and overblown stuff as a storytelling device & an intentional instrumentation choice feels kind of revolutionary, especially so on the 17-minute adventure that is “Sister Ray”. By modern standards (& arguably, even by the early-mid 70s), this general style has been played to death, and gotten louder & screechier. As such, this album doesn’t sound as crazy to the ears as it probably did back then. We’re literally just a year after Sgt. Pepper’s, so something like this popping up from that band with the banana on the cover must’ve been jarring as hell.

I’ve heard noisier & stranger stuff on the list though, so something like this where the musicality is still pretty intact throughout the whole thing makes it all feel normal by comparison. There’s good storytelling throughout this thing, some great guitar riffs, some maddening percussion, and enough of a vocal presence to keep the 40 minute runtime flowing really well. It’s abrasive as hell, but that’s why I like it. It’s definitely not an album for everyone, and I think that even for me, it would’ve been too much a while ago. I really don’t know what else to say – I think this is an album best experienced by just listening to it and letting the brain go nuts. I’m at a 5, but I totally understand why it might be a 3 or even a 2 for someone else.

P.S.: Shoutout to “The Gift” for being the very first “Subway Surfers-core” track ever put to tape.

I hated The Gift but apart from that it was a decent enough album

This album was ahead of its time. Unfortunately, it also sounds compressed to shit. I can’t hear the vocals 90% of the time. I would like this so much more if I could hear it. Sister Ray is awesome though, and Lou Reed’s vocals on Lady Godiva’s Operation are so funny to me. Favorite songs were White Light/White Heat, Lady Godiva’s Operation, and Sister Ray.

Like the Ramones a decade later, The Velvet Underground had an uncanny understanding of rock-n-roll, so that while they are experimental, at times utterly off-kilter, they are never inaccessible, not even on 'The Gift,' which features John Cale's recitation of an eight minute short story written by Lou Reed. That story happens to be deliciously suspenseful and surprising effective as literature, w/ an ending worthy of an American master such as Flannery O'Connor: 'which split slightly and caused little rhythmic arcs of red to pulsate in the gentle morning sun.' W/ that said, I find it hard to love this record as much as I love their first, which as an artistic statement rivals almost anything. It gives me a great deal of pleasure, but not all-out affection.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a rather divisive inclusion on the list, but I absolutely loved it.

Favourite tracks: the Gift, Sister Ray