Strikingly and unexpectedly, Lou Reed's "Berlin" … is one of the strongest, most original rock records in years….

His last two albums had their virtues, but left him open to the charge of being burned out. Now, with "Berlin," he has proven conclusively that he must be counted as one of the most important figures in contemporary rock….

Reed is really a poetic artist who creates unified statements through the medium of the rock record. The backings are clothed in rock dress, but the form is more operatic and cinematic than strictly musical in the traditional pop sense, and the sentiments are entirely personal.

Where others prance and play at evoking an aura of drugs and sexual aberrance, Reed is coldly real. "Berlin" is a typically dreamlike saga of a sado-masochistic love affair in contemporary Berlin. But the contemporaneity is enriched by a subtle acknowledgment of [Bertolt] Brecht and...