Pazz & Jop 2011: Brad Nelson On Why Lou Reed And Metallica’s Lulu Was 2011’s Best Album Lars’ stiff, immovable drumming is an unrepeatable event, even for himself. The word “ponderous” comes to mind. His style is one of overstatement, even while his drumming is inflexibly linear. These seemingly disparate techniques meet and produce a kind of inertia. Lars brings his arm down as if it is a bowling pin pivoting in a socket, that, untensed, might slip neatly from his side to the floor. His arms don’t yield or snap like arms; they don’t move through the air so much as phase in and out of gravity’s pull. Physics work on him differently. They go variable. As much he is untroubled by groove, neither is he metronomic. He does not keep time because he is not a time keeper. He fills a necessary space—or, rather, he modifies the space itself until it is totally susceptible to his great insane crashing. Lars is the singer; Lou is the drummer. In “Frustration,” the guitars drop vertically from the mix and Lars follows Lou into a dark, uncertain space; Lou leads him there but Lars gives shape to the dark in tense, arrhythmic flashes. I wrote about Lulu for The Village Voice and now I strangely want for nothing. I don’t know if I made any sort of case for the record. I don’t know if there is a case to be made. I don’t think I wrote “here’s why Lulu is the album of the year” as much as I wrote “this is how Lou Reed and Metallica free each other to drift into new spaces.”

Pazz & Jop 2011: Brad Nelson On Why Lou Reed And Metallica’s Lulu Was 2011’s Best Album

Lars’ stiff, immovable drumming is an unrepeatable event, even for himself. The word “ponderous” comes to mind. His style is one of overstatement, even while his drumming is inflexibly linear. These seemingly disparate techniques meet and produce a kind of inertia. Lars brings his arm down as if it is a bowling pin pivoting in a socket, that, untensed, might slip neatly from his side to the floor. His arms don’t yield or snap like arms; they don’t move through the air so much as phase in and out of gravity’s pull. Physics work on him differently. They go variable. As much he is untroubled by groove, neither is he metronomic. He does not keep time because he is not a time keeper. He fills a necessary space—or, rather, he modifies the space itself until it is totally susceptible to his great insane crashing. Lars is the singer; Lou is the drummer. In “Frustration,” the guitars drop vertically from the mix and Lars follows Lou into a dark, uncertain space; Lou leads him there but Lars gives shape to the dark in tense, arrhythmic flashes.

I wrote about Lulu for The Village Voice and now I strangely want for nothing.

I don’t know if I made any sort of case for the record. I don’t know if there is a case to be made. I don’t think I wrote “here’s why Lulu is the album of the year” as much as I wrote “this is how Lou Reed and Metallica free each other to drift into new spaces.”