''Set the Twilight Reeling'' is the seventeenth studio album by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

musician Lou Reed, released on February 20, 1996 by

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...

Packaging and lyrics

The cover artwork direction and packaging design was done by

Stefan Sagmeister Stefan Sagmeister (born August 6, 1962) is an Austrian graphic designer, storytelling, storyteller, and typographer based in New York City. In 1993, Sagmeister founded his company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs for the music industry. He has ...

. The photograph is by

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (born February 16, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format. Early life Greenfield-Sanders was born on February 16, ...

. The CD case sold with the album was a dark purple/blue

hue In color theory, hue is one of the main properties (called color appearance parameters) of a color, defined technically in the CIECAM02 model as "the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that ...

, making the cover look like a dark blue picture of Reed's face; the bright yellow aspect and the "rays" of the cover image were only made apparent when the liner notes were removed from its case. As noted on the lyric sheet, "Finish Line" was Reed's tribute to

the Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The original line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise ...

's guitarist

Sterling Morrison Holmes Sterling Morrison Jr. (August 29, 1942 – August 30, 1995) was an American guitarist, best known as one of the founding members of the rock group the Velvet Underground, usually playing electric guitar, occasionally bass guitar, a ...

, who had died the previous year. The album is dedicated to

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

, whom Reed would marry twelve years after its release. David Fricke of ''Rolling Stone'' wrote that Laurie Anderson was the love interest in the track "Hooky Wooky", in which Reed writes of his jealousy over his paramour's ex-lovers.

Reception

''Set the Twilight Reeling'' received generally positive reviews from critics.

Track listing

All tracks written by Lou Reed. #"Egg Cream" – 5:18 #"NYC Man" – 4:56 #"Finish Line" – 3:24 #"Trade In" – 4:59 #"Hang On to Your Emotions" – 3:46 #"Sex with Your Parents (Motherfucker), Part II" – 3:37 #"HookyWooky" – 4:19 #"The Proposition" – 3:27 #"Adventurer" – 4:18 #"Riptide" – 7:46 #"Set the Twilight Reeling" – 5:04 "Sex with Your Parents (Motherfucker)" recorded live on July 14, 1995 at The Roof,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the ''Set the Twilight Reeling'' liner notes. *Lou Reed –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...

* Fernando Saunders –

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, acoustic guitar on "NYC Man",

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

* Tony "Thunder" Smith – drums, backing vocals *

Oliver Lake Oliver Lake (born September 14, 1942) is an American jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist. He is known mainly for alto saxophone, but he also performs on soprano and flute. During the 1960s, Lake worked with the Black ...

, J. D. Parran,

Russell Gunn Russell Gunn (born October 20, 1971 in Chicago) is an American contemporary jazz trumpeter. He grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois playing trumpet. As a kid his musical interest was hip hop, with LL Cool J being his first music idol. His project ...

–

horns Horns or The Horns may refer to: * Plural of Horn (instrument), a group of musical instruments all with a horn-shaped bells * The Horns (Colorado), a summit on Cheyenne Mountain * ''Horns'' (novel), a dark fantasy novel written in 2010 by Joe Hill ...

on "NYC Man" *

Roy Bittan Roy J. Bittan (born July 2, 1949) is an American musician best known as a long-time member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. Nicknamed "The Professor", Bittan joined the E Street Band in 1974. He plays the piano, organ, accordion and synthe ...

–

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

on "Finish Line" * Mino Cinelu –

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

on "Finish Line" *

– backing vocals on "Hang On to Your Emotions" ;Technical *Struan Oglanby – programming, production co-ordination * Bob Ludwig - mastering

References

External links

* {{Authority control Lou Reed albums 1996 albums Albums produced by Lou Reed Albums with cover art by Stefan Sagmeister Sire Records albums