I bought Mistrial the first week it was released on the notion that it was a Lou Reed record, and weren't all Lou Reed records supposed to be, at the very least, listenable. Mistrial is far from listenable, but it is certainly criminal.
For some reason, Reed seems to embrace nearly everything that is wrong about the 80's: from the flaccid drum beats to the woefully gated and sterile production, to Reed's own attempt at rapping ("The Original Wrapper"), it is the first glimpse of Lou sounding his age and becoming just as embarassing as a dad picking up their kid at middle school in a mini-van with Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls" blaring out of the windows.
Strangely, RCA record decided that Mistrial was commerically viable enough to pump enough money into it for not one, but two piece of shit videos, with the second one being produced by Godley and Creme, which means nothing to you kids now, but back then, we all thought any video directed by Godley and Creme was automatically good, just like we thought Lou Reed albums were.
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