I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute To The Velvet Underground & Nico

I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground & Nico is a spellbinding contemporary version of the Velvets debut, with each of the album’s songs performed by one of the band’s noteworthy artistic descendants. The album was overseen and executive produced by Hal Wilner, Reed’s dear friend and producer who died last year.

While the Velvets’ avant-art credentials are understandably fully on display on this collection, Kurt Vile & the Violators’ roaring, guitar-charged “Run Run Run” provides a staggering reminder that the Velvets were sometimes just a torrid rock & roll band. Michael Stipe, whose former band R.E.M. played such an important role in reviving the Velvet Underground in the Eighties, takes a cue from Reed’s sweet original vocal on “Sunday Morning” to offer his own heartfelt take on that strangely disturbing ballad.

It’s a challenge, no doubt, to approach The Velvet Underground & Nico all these years later, even as a listener. The album has so thoroughly altered and shaped the climate of the musical universe of the past half century that it’s virtually impossible in visceral terms to experience its revolutionary significance. Of course that’s primarily because the Velvet Underground made it possible for the revolutionary to become the stuff of our everyday lives. But it must be borne in mind that a group of artists this adventurous and wild coming together on one album for any reason is itself a realization of the Velvet Underground’s legacy. And presented with the choice of faithfully covering the Velvets or redefining the band in their own modern-day terms – or landing anywhere in between – these artists absorbed and enacted the most important lesson the Velvet Underground had to teach: They did exactly what they wanted to do, and meant it.