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The good stuff is strong enough that anyone who cares about Lou Reed's body of work, or Edgar Allan Poe's literary legacy, ought to give it a careful listen.
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This experiment in rock 'n' roll Poe is a great success even if you occasionally forget that this is rock 'n' roll after all.
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The Raven... does fly on the side of the bizarre, but it holds some rich pickings.
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The WireA rewarding and self-consciously motley fest. [#227, p.60]
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In the end, what makes this fabulous disaster of an album work is the passion of Reed's performance.
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MojoDemanding, certainly, but a formidable and ambitious endeavour achieved with wit and passion. [Feb 2003, p.86]
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The spoken words mix wonderfully with excellent musical arrangements, but the original songs primarily suffer in comparison.
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Of course it's pretentious, but the blend of reading-group rock, goth showtunes and gold standard hamming from Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi is surprisingly compelling after a while.
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Reed has once again stretched the boundaries of popular music and, in doing so, has honored Edgar Allan Poe's illustrious legacy, along with his own.
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Q MagazineInevitably, it's a bit of a mess.... But if you like Poe, or Reed, and can tolerate the incoherence, there's fun to be had. [Feb 2003, p.105]
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Probably makes more sense in a theatre than on your CD player.
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Often falters distressingly.
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Though perfect for hipster English-lit teachers, ravenous Reed fans will find themselves saying "nevermore."
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The outcome is alternately brilliant and awful, adventurous and boring, incisive and pretentious, over-wrought and subtle.
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While that approach might have worked well on stage, on disc it's deeply unsatisfying.
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BlenderThe format is so rambling and fragmented that is serves neither Poe the storyteller noor Reed the songwriter. [#13, p.97]
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Reed's wraparound originals are mostly vaudeville, which is to say laughable. [Note: The score listed is for the 2xCD version. The single CD version received a lower score of 1/5 stars.]
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UncutAll albums are vanity projects, but this vanity may be in vain. [Feb 2003, p.76]
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Reed coaxes great performances out of a few unexpected collaborators--Ornette Coleman delivers frenetic sax playing on “Guilty,” and downtown singer Antony warbles in a truly otherworldly soprano on “The Bed”--but these players are crowded out by the album’s sprawling mediocrity.
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Maybe it worked on the stage, but taken out of context the result is a two-hour "Huh?" of an album.
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Really, don't waste your time with this.
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This album is as much of a baffling nadir as Metal Machine Music, with nowhere near the stoned bravado.
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The Raven is downright awful, perhaps Reed’s worst album since Metal Machine Music.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 14
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Mixed: 1 out of 14
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Negative: 1 out of 14
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Jul 16, 2019
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EnriqueRDec 9, 2006
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CosmoJun 2, 2005Makes me want to dance! The most sensual party album of the decade