Lou Reed’s new album ‘The Raven’, due for a January release, will continue Reed’s interest in Edgar Allen Poe’s poetry with musical interpretations of the nineteenth century poet’s work. Reed and avant garde theater director Robert Wilson hatched POEtry, a piece of musical theater that debuted in Hamburg, Germany, in 2000. More recently, Reed took part in producer Hal Willner's annual Poe Invitational Halloween performance at the University of California Los Angeles. The latest project involves a number of collaborators – actors William Defoe, Steve Buscemi and Amanda Plummer all read on the album, while David Bowie, Laurie Anderson and Ornette Coleman all contribute musically.
"For sure Edgar Allen Poe is that most classical of American writers -- a writer more peculiarly attuned to our new century's heartbeat then he ever was to his own," Reed told fans on his web site. "Obsessions, paranoia, willful acts of self destruction surround us constantly . . . When given the opportunity to bring him to life through words and music -- text and dance -- why I leapt at it -- I surged towards it like a Rottweiler chasing a bloody bone".