White Light/White Heat (45th Anniversary Edition)

pitchfork

When the Velvet Underground's second album descended on the world in January, 1968, nobody was ready for it. As the story goes, it was a relentless, screeching, thudding, scoffing assault on the pop sensibilities of its time. For its 45th anniversary it's been reissued in expanded, remastered form, and listening to White Light/White Heat now, it doesn't quite fit the template of its legend.

rollingstone

Reviled by their hippie contemporaries, barely acknowledged by their record company, pegged by the media as a pop nightmare sprung full-blown from the pasty forehead of Andy Warhol, the members of the Velvet Underground worked hard and paid heavily for their place in rock history. It seems incredible now that in the band's troubled lifetime […]