"I've come to hate my body..."

This lp, their third, was my first introduction to the Velvet Underground, and while it wasn't anything like I'd expected, I was instantly besotted. See, I'd heard of the Velvets, they sang about trannies and drugs and fags and all kinds of big city decadence which at the time seemed just fabulous. But this was something much more complicated, most of the songs were delicate and sublime and dreamy and on occasion even sweet. Hell, "What Goes On" was so groovy it was almost danceable. And what about "Jesus?" If it was ironic it sure as hell didn't sound it. And then there were the two gems, the oddly pastoral "Candy Says" and the swoony "Pale Blue Eyes," two songs whose beauty still stops me dead in my tracks, nails me to the wall, even makes me (ahem) a bit misty. There were still hints of cynicism and perversion here and there, "I'm Set Free" with its "new illustions," "Some Kinda Love" ("no kinds of love are better than others"), and "After Hours," which is apparently about a murder, but the record as a whole achieved a weird sort of balance between despair ("I've come to hate my body") and transcendence. Anyhow, this is my Velvet Underground, a tad more romantic than cynical but all the more fabulous for it.