Review by Malcolm Contreras

After listening to a record, I like to walk away feeling like I listened to something unlike anything else I’ve heard. Transformer didn’t quite give me what I desired from an album experience. Within a few tracks, I was easily able to pinpoint who produced the album- however, the songwriting felt more unique than what I'd heard before.

Throughout the record, it was hard to pinpoint Lou Reed's musical voice. More often than not, Reed’s musical voice is being drowned out by Bowie and Ronson’s production. On Vicious, the balance of the bass and the guitar at the beginning is nice but as soon as the vocals come in, the track feels hollow. Even on the other louder cuts on the album, the vocals don’t feel nearly as hollow as they do on the opener. More often than not, I think the overdriven guitars could be knocked down a few db as well. I’m sure the gritty mix on tracks like Hangin’ Around and Vicious is intentional- but between all the heavier mixes, all I see are inconsistencies. The more I listened to the record though, the more charm I found.

Tracks like Perfect Day, Walk on the Wild Side, and Make Up are where I find Reed’s strengths. On my first couple of listen-throughs, I kept getting hung up on how much I didn’t like the first couple of tracks (excluding Perfect Day), but when I started the album from Perfect Day (and skipped Hangin’ Round), a lot of my complaints had disappeared. The mixes feel a lot more intentional and clean. The string arrangements throughout the album are beautiful, lush, and balanced well. The bass lines feel alive and unique with the iconic and silly slides on Walk on the Wild Side and the creeping and lingering bass part at the start of Make Up before it starts to have weight and presence to it while being doubled by brass. I also (of course) really enjoyed when Bowie was tapped in for background vocals.

Reed’s lyrics are also hyper-personal and paint a picture of who Reed is. The tongue and cheek-ness of Make Up, NY Telephone Connection, and Goodnight Ladies left me grinning while listening through. For the time as well, openly talking about sex, sexuality, race, and drugs was not quite where the mainstream taste was, but it was Reed’s life and he did not shy away from talking about these things either, especially when it came to bringing Andy Warhol into it…

Transformer has Lou Reed’s tongue-in-cheek charm but feels weakest when it leans too much on its influences and producers.

I rate this album 12 Decepticons/18 Autobots.

Lou Reed - Transformer REVIEW