Familiar songs, plain-spoken truths

Fifty years ago, David Bowie co-produced Lou Reed’s Transformer, thus giving the former leader of the Velvet Underground his first real taste of the overground.

Bowie and Reed never worked together again. But the simultaneous appearance of three posthumous new releases—one by Bowie, who died in 2016, and two by Reed, who died in 2013—makes it hard not to consider the rockers in tandem.

Moonage Daydream: A Film by Brett Morgen is the soundtrack to Brett Morgen’s new Bowie documentary of the same name (currently playing at an IMAX theater near you). I’m So Free: The 1971 RCA Demos and Words & Music, May 1965 are collections of Reed demos that, as the term demo implies, were never meant for public delectation.

Structurally, the Reed albums have nothing in common with the Bowie project. Sonically, they don’t even have much in common with each other. The post–Velvet Underground I’m So Free sounds clear and bright. The pre–Velvet Underground Words & Music, extracted from a private tape that the 23-year-old Reed made as a way of unofficially copyrighting his early ­compositions, sounds subterranean.

Beneath their surfaces, however, both come across as the work of a talented, reedy-voiced (no pun intended) misfit and contain songs that would loom large throughout the rest of Reed’s career (“Heroin,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” and “I’m Waiting for the Man” on Words & Music, “Perfect Day” and “Berlin” on I’m So Free). They also ­document Reed’s laughter, balancing his image as a sneering misanthrope, and capture him sounding humble.

The Bowie soundtrack, on the other hand, views its subject from a great height, taking a panoramic view of Bowie’s life and work.

It forgoes the familiar, preferring deep cuts and live versions (or, in the case of “Modern Love,” an instrumental mix) of most of the hits it includes. It jumbles chronology, freely mixing Bowie’s surefire ’70s, his hit-or-miss ’80s, and his dud ’90s until you’re not sure which is which. “Edits,” “excerpts,” and medleys function as segues.

It also includes spoken segments that turn Bowie into a kind of ghostly docent guiding listeners through the museum of his life. In some of these, Bowie seems portentous, the opposite of the demeanor of the relaxed, demo-­making Reed. But Bowie could also deliver plain-spoken truth. “All people,” he says, “no matter who they are, they all wish they’d appreciated life more.”

It’s hard to imagine Reed’s disagreeing with that.