When I tell people my all-time favorite album is 1969’s self-titled release from The Velvet Underground, they inevitably think I mean The Velvet Underground & Nico, their debut.  Instead, what I mean is their third release.

It may seem odd a group with only four albums released during their time together would have two that were eponymous.  Actually, it makes sense if one considers the group had parted ways with John Cale and, with that, a sea change in sound occurred.  Critics then and now have wondered (and usually not kindly) why the group largely set aside for this set the noise that had distinguished VU&N and White Light/White Heat.  There were claims the group had lost their edge.  I feel the exact opposite, that this openly frank and intimate record is as daring as those earlier excursions into feedback.

Consider the opening track, “Candy Says”.  As an example of the disc’s sublime sequencing, no other track could possibly precede it.  It was the first of a few songs Lou Reed wrote that have that interesting naming convention of “[woman’s name] Says”.  The first two lines of this one have the title character revealing how much they despise their body and everything it needs.  Even if one has never had that same thought precisely, I doubt the humanity of anybody who hasn’t considered something roughly like it before.  That the real-life inspiration for this track is a trans person doesn’t change the universality of the sentiment.

I mentioned this is an intimate album, and it is often confessional in tone.  It is full of the types of thoughts which bother a person around three in the morning if they can’t go to sleep.  Even more intimate is the original mix done by Reed, which has consequently been dubbed the “Closet Mix”.  At times, it’s like he (or Doug Yule, in the case of the opening number) is right there next to you, and there’s no need to yell.

But the second song…oh, dear God, I struggle to find the words to describe “What Goes On”.  It has been my favorite song by anybody, ever, since I first heard it over 30 years ago.  Despite how much I love lyrical content, the words here are almost negligible to me.  You see, after the words are finished, the song moves through two passages of unspeakable, heart-breaking beauty.  First, there’s the twinning guitar lines, spiraling around each other, arcing and plummeting again.  And then, as if the soul can bear any more, they give way to the organ and the recording transcends the best I thought humans are capable of producing.  It doesn’t need words—this is the real Esperanto, a universal language that doesn’t even need words.

Other tracks explore more specific, and seemingly deeply personal topics.  “Some Kinda Love” is the most carnal of the tracks, somehow being very direct while as being far from chaste as it is from vulgarity.  I also want to mention it is the most radically different, and benefits the most, in the closet mix compared to the one that has traditionally been readily available.  “Pale Blue Eyes” is a painfully bittersweet ode to a love that is consummated once but can never be a lasting affair.  “Jesus” is a simply written and delivered cry in the night, though such a plea delivered to the title character scans a bit odd coming from the Jewish Reed.

Yet other tracks seem to express platitudes, but I think they are more concerned with the questions than delivering any real answers.  The title of “Beginning To See The Light” suggests the dawning of a great revelation, but the lyrics instead largely express the futility of effort and bewilderment at a friend’s betrayal.  “I’m Set Free” finds the singer freed from an unspecified situation, only for them to seek out a different fallacy for them to accept.  “The Story Of My Life” is simply two lines repeated a few times, the message concerning wrong and right no longer being recognizable from each other.

The weird outlier, and the only bad egg in the set is the penultimate selection, “The Murder Mystery”.  Funny how almost every great album has one track that is significantly different, or worse, than the rest.  In this case, alas, it is both of those.  For almost nine minutes, it alternates between faster sections where Reed and Sterling Morrison deliver seemingly unrelated lines simultaneously, each in a separate channel, alternating with Yule and Moe Tucker doing the same over slower sections of music.  I can’t think of many positive things to say about it.  At best, it keeps with the vibe of the record in that it conveys the kind of existential terror one might experience if wide awake in the middle of the night.  Also, it does keep with the group’s contrarian spirit, which some may not detect in the other tracks.

But then all is right again with the last track, “After Hours”.  In the same way only “Candy Says” could open side one, no song could possibly follow this one at the end of side two.  This is a perfect song, one where the music and lyrics perfectly establish the setting; in this case, the after-hours bar of the title.  This would be Tucker’s only solo vocal performance on that original run of four studio albums, and there couldn’t be a better choice in the world. 

I have lived with this album so long, and have absorbed it so thoroughly, that I believe it is now in my DNA and cannot be separated from myself.  Quite fortuitously, my introduction was courtesy of the first German CD pressing of it, as that was the only way to hear the closet mix at the time in that format.  I wonder if it would have become my favorite album if I had first heard the other mix.  I can’t imagine that nor I can imagine life without it.  I may not be a spiritual person but I like to imagine that, if there is an afterlife, it is shooting through the universe for eternity, riding the organ riff from the end of “What Goes On” and never having it fade out—just experiencing that joy and wonder forever.