Stephen Emmer & Lou Reed: "Passengers"

From little-known Dutch composer Stephen Emmer comes the smartest, most well-read album of the year…literally. A spoken word record for the hyperliterate—or perhaps, more appropriately, the unbearably pretentious—Recitement features 17 tracks of works from authors/ideologues like Samuel Beckett, Charles Baudelaire, and (wtf?) Yoko Ono read by artists/demagogues such as Allen Ginsberg, Jorge Luis Borges, and (wtf?) Richard Burton, all accompanied by Emmer’s chamber pop stylings. Emmer himself dubs it “a kind of rap 2.0 but then created the other way around: first the text, then the music.” The most successful marriage of text, narrator, and music features the inimitable Lou Reed’s purposefully monotone rendering of Paul Theroux’s 1965 travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar. The misty, noir-like piano and vibraphone of the opening eventually give way to a slightly more insistent string and snare drum pairing. Reed’s recitation throughout is calm and steadfast: it’s a four month journey across Asia by train; there’s no need to hurry.