Lou Reed & Metallica Release Clips from Every Song on ‘Lulu’

Lou Reed & Metallica have released thirty second clips from every song on their upcoming collaborative album 'Lulu,' and, they sound, well.....uhhh....really well recorded! And gosh, is that cool looking cover art!

OK, just kidding, we can find more positive things to say than that. Plus, much as we reserved judgement on the rest of the album based on the disjointed first single 'The View,' it would be foolish to assume 30 second clips are going to tell the whole story of an album that's so long it won't even fit on one CD.

But it's not looking all that promising, so far.

While there are moments where the unlikely partners find new common ground, such as the acoustic guitar intro of 'Brandenburg Gate' or the extremely familiar 'Sweet Jane' near-jangle of 'Iced Honey,' there's also a lot of what sounds like Metallica bashing out new arrangements in a rehearsal room while a feeble-sounding old man warbles along unencumbered by melody, or pitch, or what the band's doing, like on 'Pumping Blood.'

Some of the clips don't reveal much at all about their songs -- 'Cheat On Me''s half-minute features sparingly plucked guitar against a new-agey sonic backdrop, while 'Frustration' focuses squarely on what sounds like a squealing out of tune violin. (Which, if I can get a little "bloggy," is just a delight coming through the headphones at 7:30 in the morning in a crowded airport full of people who just found out they got up early just so they could sit through a series of weather delays.)

Most troubling is 'Dragon,' which finds Reed busting out some off-key, half-spoken beat poetry over, and we're guessing, some actually intriguing backwards guitar feedback. If 'Saturday Night Live' ever decided to parody this oddly matched new supergroup, it's hard to say where they could go to make his "hal-uuu-sin-AAAAAAAAAAA-tion" delivery sound any odder.

Listen to Clips From Lou Reed & Metallica's 'Lulu'