Lou Reed is probably a genius. During his days … with the Velvet Underground, he was responsible for some of the most amazing stuff ever to be etched in vinyl; all those great, grinding, abrasive songs about ambivalence, bonecrushers, Asthmador, toxic psychosis and getting dicked,… and those wonderful cottonmouth lullabies…. His first solo album, Lou Reed, was a bit of a disappointment in light of his work with the Velvets….

[Homosexuality] was always an inherent aspect of the Velvet Underground's ominous and smutsome music, but it was always a pushy, amoral and aggressive kind of sexuality. God knows rock & roll could use, along with a few other things, some good faggot energy, but, with some notable exceptions, the sexuality that Reed proffers on Transformer is timid and flaccid.

"Make Up," a tune about putting on make-up and coming "out of the closets / out on the street," is as corny and innocuous as "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story. There's no energy, no assertion. It isn't decadent, it isn't perverse, it isn't rock & roll, it's just a stereotypical image of the faggot-as-sissy traipsing around and lisping about effeminacy.

"Goodnight Ladies" is another cliche about the lonely Saturday nights, the perfumed decadence and the wistful sipping of mixed drinks at closing time.

"New York Telephone Conversation" is a cutesy poke at New York pop-sphere gossip and small talk, as if anyone possibly gave two shits about it in the first place.

Perhaps the worst of the batch, "Perfect Day" is a soft lilter about spending a wonderful day drinking Sangria in the park with his girlfriend, about how it made him feel so normal, so good. Wunnerful, wunnerful, wunnerful.

And then there's the good stuff. Real good stuff. "Vicious" is almost abrasive enough and the lyrics are great…. It's the best song he's done since the days of the Velvet Underground, the kind of song he can do best….

"Walk on the Wild Side" is another winner, a laid-back, seedy pullulator in the tradition of "Pale Blue Eyes," the song is about various New York notables and their ramiform homo adventures, punctuated eerily by the phrases "walk on the wild side" and "and the colored girls go 'toot-ta-doo, too-ta-doo.'" Great images of hustling, defensive blowjobs and someone shaving his legs while hitchhiking 1500 miles from Miami to New York….

"Hangin' 'Round" and "Satellite of Love" are the two remaining quality cuts, songs where the sexuality is protopathic rather than superficial.

Reed himself says he thinks the album's great. I don't think it's nearly as good as he's capable of doing. He seems to have the abilities to come up with some really dangerous, powerful music, stuff that people like [Mick] Jagger and [David] Bowie have only rubbed knees with. He should forget this artsy-fartsy kind of homo stuff and just go in there with a bad hangover and start blaring out his visions of lunar assfuck. That'd be really nice.