By: Lou Reed Average Rating: Binding: Audio CD Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered Label: RCA Number of Discs: 1 Release Date: February 20, 2001
One of Lou's Worst Aside from "Kill Your Sons" there isn't much to redeem this garbage. And "Kill Your Sons" usually sounds better live than it does here. Here it's slickly produced but somehow lifeless compared to when Lou and Robert Quine would shred it on their guitars back in the 80's.
Lou sounds near dead on this one, and most likely he was very close to death. Naturally this was his highest charting album ever in terms of sales.
The lost in the wasteland years had begun and he didn't really start to come out of it till "street hassle" and that of course barely sold at all.
Sally Can't Dance is not a bad Lou Reed album but it is not a great Lou Reed album either. It is more mellow then most of Reed's albums but no more mellow then Coney Island Baby, which is not only a personal favorite of mine but is considered to be one of his all time best. So that is clearly not the issue with the album the issue lies in the fact that some of the albums songs are forgettable and some just not so good.
I feel it important to mention that Lou has a great voice and this album more then any other in his discovery shows that and shows it well. This album also shows great song writing skills which is nothing new as Reed has always been known as a poet.
The great title track 'Sally Can't Dance' is easily the strongest song on the album. The irony to this song is priceless, because this is a very danceable song with a killer groove, that is something really rare in a Lou Reed song. As cool as Lou Reed is I assume he can't dance. 'Ride Sally Ride' 'Animal Language' 'N.Y. Stars' and 'Kill Your Sons' are all great while the rest of the album is just forgettable, and the bonus tracks fall under this problem as well.
Sally Can't Dance is an album for Reed fanatics really, I wouldn't recommend it to just the casual fan especially those who seem to look at this album as the next logical step after Transformer.
Not as bad as you think. Sally Can't Dance was released to the most hype ever for a Lou Reed album. His first, self-titled album had great songs and a clueless band, Transformer was next, and third was the great live Rock and Roll Animal, all classics, that have withstood the test of time, now 35 years on. For the crime of not approaching the lofty standards set by his first 3 albums, and the growing Velvet Underground cult, Sally Can't Dance was Lou's only top ten album, and almost universally panned by critics. If Lou, or anyone else for that matter, put out this identical album in 2008, it would be on every critic's Top Ten list. If you've avoided this title due to the common wisdom that it's a dud, give it a chance. It's not his best, by any means, but if you already own the first 3, plus Street Hassle, The Blue Mask, and Magic and Loss, you should try this one or any of his other albums on for size. They all have charm.
Bangs was wrong Playing this (on lp, I haven't heard the remastered cd) after so many years was a shock. I'm not sure if I ever played it all the way through after buying it in the early 90s. Lester Bangs said it was emotionless and terrible, and I didn't bother to verify.
However, note that on these Amazon reviews, no one hates it. Interesting.
Unfortunately, Lester was wrong, and his response was the template for all other critical takes on this record. After all, if Lester, Lou Reed's only champion, didn't like it, it couldn't be worth anything, right?
22 years later, it's not fantastic, but unlike some of the Arista stuff, it's playable, musical, enjoyable. The most famous songs, Sally Can't Dance and Kill Yr. Sons, are probably the worst on the album. Overall it belongs in the second rank of Reed records, with New Sensations and Coney Island Baby, Street Hassle, and New York, not with the bad ones like his first, or Mistrial, or the jazz-lite Arista stuff (though I'm going to relisten to those too, just to make sure). That said, it's no Berlin, Legendary Hearts, Blue Mask, Magic and Loss, or Set the Twilight Reeling. But I bet you'll enjoy it.
This Peroxide Lou Scored With A Top 10 Album.. Hey, the previously unreleased track found here,Good Taste repeats "Your Making A Fool Out Of Yourself"..you can fool some of the people all the time but this album no matter how much Lou or the critics castigate it is still entertaining and is as retro atavistic now as it was then. The "jazz" singer crooning on excess in the "slimy" New York I lived in then and now knows that the fool who persists in folly eventually becomes wise".. The production of the songs shine with a glossy spacious unmuddled effect something unlike one considers typical Lou but the touches of horn, minimal reliance on heavy handed guitar preferring the soloing of a Danny Weis,so unlike his usual,and that 1970's keyboard texture all come together in this sketchy druggie funky schmaltzy autobiographical slices of an album reeking of commercialism,debauchery and sincerity simultaneously. Saw Lou on this tour coming out in a green robe like a demented Muhammad Ali and with a click of the fingers the robe removed by his henchman...saw that tourniquet scene during heroin and well..this is still certainly a piece of musical history from one of the genius's that music knows...
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