[BestEverAlbums]

Today's album of the day

White Light/White Heat by The Velvet Underground (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1968.
Country:
Overall rank: 163
Decade rank: 29
Year rank: 7
Discography rank: 3 (out of 18 albums on BEA)
Average rating: 84/100 (from 1419 votes).



Tracks:
1. White Light/White Heat
2. The Gift
3. Lady Godiva's Operation
4. Here She Comes Now
5. I Heard Her Call My Name
6. Sister Ray

indicates a top-rated track.

Top voted comments:

"Drugged out album which involves nearly zero songwriting, the sound of a band that doesn't give a fuck! I can't see its experimental nature, all The Velvet Underground ever did on this record was to turn up the volume and allow the created feed-back and noise to be maintained in the mix. The poem on "The Gift" sounds goofy, most songs consist of monotonous rhythm patterns and the variety on this album is minimal.

I get that most people see this as a groundbreaking wall of noise, but I think the band were lacking discipline in the creating of the album to make it anywhere near great. Besides the opener, which works fine as opener but nothing more, and the idea of a long track to end the album, this album is nothing but free play!

I wasn't looking for a pleasant pop-album, but even from an avant-garde music lover's point of view, I wouldn't be able to see the greatness from this album. After all it isn't very experimental, it's only a pumping rhythm section that never stops, where each member play whatever they want to. We've already seen this from free-form jazz!

So why is this album ranked and rated so high? My guess is because of The Velvet Underground's completely exaggerated image. It's not because I'm scared of the album's dissonant and unstructured composition, but this band's discography and especially this album is like a complex joke: If you don't get it, you're probably just stupid. Hurry up laughing, or someone else will notice!"
- Mother Nature's Son (Rating: 70/100)
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"F*cking amazing noise. Every track sounds great, from The Gift's droning voice-over to Sister Ray's noisy, long jams to Lady Godiva's Operation's perfect vocal and guitar union."
- Defago (Rating: 95/100)
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About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.
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Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[HoldenM]

Madness. I love it.

Track picks
2. The Gift
4. Here She Comes Now
6. Sister Ray
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Inversion Verses
https://thesplitinfinitives1.bandcamp.com/album/inversion-verses

[DommeDamian]

Starting out as really really disliking The Velvet Underground, it should come as no surprise to anybody that, for musicians who doesn’t hit so hard for me to begin with end on my chart, these influential guys would do it someday too. But it’s not the Banana, noooo, it’s the other opus.
White Light/White Heat is a tight 6 track masterclass of how to innovate with style. And chaos./As most fans of it, they know it’s very proto-punk. But even in punk music, this is very challenging. Title track opens with a bang and a rhythm that gets you going from the first second to the end. The rhythm is very much rooted in blues, and is arguably why it is the only song on here with actual (traditional rock) structure. Mr. Reed’s vocal on the track is something …… special to say the least: he sounds like he’s lisp-mumbling through the verses while stoned out of his mind, whereas the choir sounds like he’s imitating a baby. Very odd, but it’s cute, daring, unique, wonderfully artful. Even the quieter Here She Comes Now feels a little uneasy in pacing and tone-painting, psychologically speaking. Yet nonetheless a grreat listen. Then we hit The Gift, which I believe to be the first one to be produced with the vocals in one stereo channel, the instrumentation in the other. Then you can choose to either block out the loose yet aggressive improvisation in a band sounding like they want nothing but destruction in the rock song, or the crazy storytelling of Waldo Jeffers told by John Cale. Or, put it together, and you get a musical gutpunch to the sub-conscious that has the potential to confuse one for days.
The next song is the beautiful Lady Godiva’s Operation, which I always come back to when listening to Velvet Underground. The melody is longlasting but have a dystopian shape, born inside a maniacal yet steady flow of the instrumentation. The vocal delivery is genius, with the shattering vibrato makes it feel creepy yet very caring. The song slowly collapses as it goes on. The chaotic I Heard Her Call My Name features the ugliest guitar solos of its kind. But just like true punk, it’s amazing because of it. A truly wild ride of a song. But not as much of a WILD journey as the elephant in the room. Sister freaking Ray. And Sister Ray...? Well Imma just let Scaruffi handle my words:
"a deafening black mass, an incantation of voices and instruments in a trance, perhaps the greatest masterpiece in all of rock music. This epic snake slithers for seventeen minutes without a moment's pause, with a throbbing beat (Maureen Tucker has every the right to list herself among the best drummers in rock history), with distorted and hissing guitar phrasing comprised of vehement assaults and soft whispers in counterpoint, with the continuous electric martyrdom of Cale, and with the acutely spirited voice of a stuttering Reed, epileptic and possessed. The tremendous accelerating beat and the spasms of emotional neurosis that shatter it from top to bottom reach sound levels and emotional intensity never before accomplished in music. The snake unfolds like a long sabbath, a ritualistic dance, a happening of collective self-destruction in a continuous eruption of gasps, psychopathic spasms, perverse violence, and obsessive delirium - a pulsating heap of sounds that explode in every direction, a dissonant hurricane of such violence as to uproot the entire civilization of music, a dramatic jubilation of enraged anguish, a mystical anarchic liberation of primordial instincts, a psychoanalytic session of automatic writing, an expansion of consciousness, an ode to the chaos of the metropolis, an anthem to universal insanity."*
“Sister Ray is the most chad piece of music ever.” - Macmusicman, RYM
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My music:
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