Heavenly Arms

Lou Reed – “Heavenly Arms”
(from The Blue Mask)

El Perro del Mar – “Heavenly Arms”
(from Love Is Not Pop)

In an obvious sign of aging, I’m starting to appreciate The Blue Mask more than just about any other Lou Reed album –- more than the pandrogynous decadence of Transformer or the druggy improprieties of Street Hassle. It’s a totally ordinary album about ordinary things. Reed sings about the joys of home ownership and the bland appeal of heterosexuality and how easy it is to skate by as a low-level, functional alcoholic. Things I can identify with! But despite its evident normalcy, The Blue Mask closes with one of the most triumphant anthems Lou Reed has ever written.

“Heavenly Arms” is a gloriously ragged and unkempt love song, full of declarative purpose and a naked passion that’s strong enough to lift it up beyond its bruised and battered delivery. Lou stretches and bends the name “Sylvia” (for his then-wife Sylvia Morales) over three measures, over and over again, flubbing notes and falling back into the morass of his and ex-Voidoid Bob Quine’s scraping guitars. It’s not always pretty, but it’s sincere. This isn’t just cheap lip service about “the glory of love,” this is a man overcome. Hell, I’d almost call this song a spiritual if I didn’t know it was coming from the slanted mouth of some leather-clad degenerate.

But I’m almost ashamed to admit that I never gave this song much consideration until I heard it covered.

Treated by El Perro del Mar, “Heavenly Arms” is cleaned up and comforted. While Lou sings like a man in the middle of a maelstrom, Sarah Assbring offers solace from the whirling shitstorm of “a world full of hate.” She takes a song that’s graceful in nature, and gives it its due diligence in the delivery –- billowing harmonies, supple counter-rhythms, plush synths, lots of empty space. She sounds so confident and sure in this song, it probably wouldn’t even occur to you that it was a cover unless it was pointed out. Her mini-album Love Is Not Pop follows the example set by “Heavenly Arms,” with each of the seven tracks coming across as a minor revelation, and, if you care, it’s one of the more pleasing purchases I’ve made recently.

I was lucky to catch El Perro del Mar open for Peter Bjorn and John over the weekend, and I was really astonished at how well these new songs translated live. Stripped of all the Balearic and vaguely ‘80s soft jam production values on the studio recordings, they really come into their own with just guitar, bass, and drums. It made me realize (a) how much more creative some bands could be with just the guitar, bass, and drum set-up, and (b) how, if you’re going to try that approach, it helps to have a flawless rhythm section and a captivating vocalist. Assbring herself, who in all her press photos looks like a Jean Seberg clone permanently stuck in a black-and-white French New Wave film but who actually looks quite different in person, engaged the entire show doing this kind of dancing that was like an exaggerated walking in place. This was kind of strange, I thought. I always thought of her music as being a sort of close the blinds and pour a bottle of red wine for one type of music, but I guess this new mini-album is a kind of dance album. Just a very private, adult kind of dancing.