The late, great Lou Reed’s long, twisty solo career was full of peaks and valleys. One of the peaks came in 1982, when Reed got together with the former Richard Hell guitarist Robert Quine and recorded The Blue Mask. The album came out on Reed’s 40th birthday, and it’s one of his best. The Blue Mask is a tense, anxious freakout of a record, and that form suited Reed especially well. Those feelings come across particularly strongly on the song “Waves Of Fear,” and Pissed Jeans have now turned that song into a heavy, forbidding banger.
