Ecstasy

Lou’s last solo rock album (it would be followed only by an ambient music album, a record of Poe interpretations, and a collaboration with Metallica), Ecstasy stands as his last great solo project. It’s a concept album about relationships and how they evolve, often dying but sometimes, when the bond is strong enough, persisting.

Standing in contrast to his previous record, Set the Twilight Reeling, which was an uncharacteristically optimistic celebration of his newfound bond with avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, Ecstasy is a brooding and often dark record, willing to dig up and tear apart failed relationships (see “Mad” and “Tatters”) and to plunge straight to the depths of human sexuality (“Ecstasy,” “Like a Possum,” and, especially, “Rock Minuet”). Lou, now comfortable in his relationship with Anderson, derived most of the record’s subject matter from past relationships, including his failed marriages to Bettye Kronstad and Sylvia Morales. Only “Turning Time Around,” one of Lou’s sweetest and most mature songs, is directed to Anderson.

Recorded with Lou’s now-permanent lineup of Mike Rathke, Fernando Saunders, and Tony “Thunder” Smith, the record was the product of a close collaboration with producer and longtime SNL staffer Hal Willner, whose friendship with Lou would only deepen until Lou’s death in 2013 (Willner would die in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic). Both men thought of Ecstasy as a high point in Lou’s career, and so they were disheartened by its poor commercial performance. Lou’s disappointment with the record’s sales was a likely contributor to his shifting career path in the last thirteen years of his life: instead of concentrating his effort into solo albums, Lou would tour his past material and embark in several fruitful collaborations with other, more contemporary artists, including New York art scene fixtures Ulrich Krieger and Sarth Calhoun, with whom he would form the Metal Machine Trio.