I think I’ve hinted at this one before (but maybe I didn’t); as such, it’s a monument of existential horror and awesome, horrific beauty.

Starting with the distorted “Happy Birthday” tape, slurring and slipping into Reed’s bluesy piano, we get a hint of where he’s going to go; sadness, loss and absolute nothingness.

The piano slams down minor chords while he reminds us what it was like, one day, to sit near the wall and drink Dubonais and ice, “Oh baby, it was paradise.”

No it wasn’t.

And he won’t allow that. He shakes us out of us from the torpor of his superb blues piano to bring us where we need to be – his own tragic recognition of failure. A Kurt Weil-ian stomp, “Lady Day” is his Reed’s first sigh at an instant realization of solipsism.’“Men of Good Fortune” continues his heartbreak, realizing that stepping into a situation where money is as more a poison than an aphrodisiac (if one has a mind).

“Caroline Says” is (among other”songs on the album) an extension of Velvet Underground songs (“Stephanie Says”) and explains his rage, the reason why he came to Berlin to rescue her, that despite her diminishment of him he’d still sit in a crappy hotel room and wait.

“How Do You Think It Feels” continues that rage, wondering how long love will endure abuse, how long it will wait until the other will come around and realize that love.

The whole first side is filled with anger, all the way to “Oh Jim” and through the last notes, seething in the words, “Caroline says that I’m just a toy” (“and she thought I could take it all…”), he’s still rescuing her from herself, despite herself, in spite of, spitting anger, “How do you think it feels… to only make love by proxy, and when do you think it stops?”

Reed is no less forgiving on the second side but he relents (as you’ll see why), wondering what else there is in the emptiness. “When you’re filled up to here with here hate, don’t you know you’ve got to get it straight?” He’s exasperated, almost finished but still willing to hang with the abuse – because, that’s how the abused roll, waiting for the next fist to fall and, knowing it’s not the last, hoping that’s it.

“Caroline Says II” extends the motif, “But she’s not afraid to die, all of her friends call her Alaska… you can beat me all you want to but I don’t I love you anymore…”

What is in her mind (to quote more lyrics)? She put her fist through the window pane… it’s so cold in Alaska….

Indeed.

The next-to-scariest song on the album, “The Kids” (including the sounds of children crying for their mother) shakes us to our bone; we wonder where we’d be in the same situation, while Reed’s anger rises to a peak. There’s nothing left, as far he’s concerned. “And I am the Water Boy, the real game’s not over here,But my heart is overflowin’ anyway, I’m just a tired man, no words to say, But since she lost her daughter, It’s her eyes that fill with water, And I am much happier this way.”

Absolutely harrowing, frightening; you can have all your slasher films, give me my Lou Reed.

And it’s not over. He watches it to the tragic conclusion, that part of us that ultimately self-destructs and burns into little pieces, ashes spread across the event horizon as the rest is pulled into the void.

The scariest song on the album cries, softly, “This is the place where we used to live, I paid for it with love and blood, And these are the boxes that he kept on the shelf, Filled with her poetry and stuff/ And this is the room where she took the razor and cut her wrists that strange and fateful night/ And I said, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling.”

We’re left to ourselves to picture the crimson stains, the smell, the moment we walk in on that.

There’s some redemption with the last song,

“Sad Song,” almost in a Bruce Springsteen sort of way but it’s not how he redeems us; we’re in no less a hell than she was. The isolation continues, ugly and alone, holding the bones of a lost soul.

“Why?” you’ll ask me, why would I bring this album to my island? I’d bring Baudelaire, I’d bring Poe and I’d bring something this dark and scary and depressing just for its sheer beauty and power.

And that’s how I roll.