Berlin (Audiophile Vinyl)

Reed’s distinctive voice - central to every track - sounds direct, immediate, centered. The realism and clarity of his tone make it appear as if he’s entered the room. You can trace his breath control, reserved coolness, and commanding phrasing. And sense the implied violence, delusion, and sorrow in the questions and statements he issues in the persona of the protagonist Jim - as well as the empathy, fatigue, confusion, and frustration he projects in his guise as Caroline.
Mobile Fidelity’s reissue also puts into a new, improved light the brilliant contributions of the standout session players. Steve Winwood (Hammond organ), Michael Brecker (tenor saxophone), Randy Brecker (trumpet), and Procol Harum drummer B.J. Wilson play key roles. The core band assisting Reed and Ezrin on a majority of Berlin - Alice Cooper guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, drum maven Aynsley Dunbar, Cream bassist Jack Bruce - turn in a collective performance for the ages. None more so than Bruce, whose bass lines resonate on this LP with a roundedness, fatness, tautness, and control that give songs added depth and foundation. Ezrin’s restrained piano, full of body and decay, performs a similar function.
Save for the opening romance of the title track and false hope of the damning (and downright nasty) “Sad Song,” "Berlin" largely trades in doom and depression. A record that starts off with a muted celebration and fond recollection ends with motherless children, slashed-wrists suicide, and a callous partner who feels no remorse for his brutal actions but professes gratitude for what becomes an unmitigated disaster.
“Life is meant to be more than this,” Reed sings in combination protest and resignation on the ironically gorgeous “Caroline Says II.” Before the next song finishes - a bleak chronicle of behaviors and decisions relayed with intentional misogyny, hatred, and shaming, and whose subdued tenor gets fractured by the sounds of wailing children crying for their mother - that life has gotten far worse. Minutes later, when Reed and company shape the swirling fever dream called “The Bed,” that life is snuffed out.