When Lou Reed released his concept album Berlin in 1973, it was a critical and commercial disaster. The late critic Lester Bangs, a fan of Reed’s, called it “a gargantuan slab of maggoty rancour that may well be the most depressed album ever made”.

But times change, and Berlin is now considered a bleak masterpiece, with the emphasis on the bleak. At the first of two nights in a 3,400-capacity shed on the outskirts of Amsterdam Reed staged a resurrection of the album, which he performed in its entirety.

Accompanied by his regular band, augmented by string and horn sections, a children’s choir and a cellist and backing singer, Reed took to the task with a customary lack of visible enthusiasm. Strumming a guitar accurately but idly, he intoned the scene-setting doggerel of the title track in his low, deadpan voice: “It was very nice/ Oh, honey it was paradise.”

Not for long, it wasn’t. While much of the music in this “song cycle” possessed a woeful beauty, the narrative, about a pair of star-crossed lovers called Caroline and Jim, was beyond awful. As a tale of drug addiction, domestic violence, child neglect and suicide unfurled, it was hard to know how to respond to such a surfeit of unrelieved tragedy.

Part of the problem was Reed’s own indifference to the plight of his characters. Intoning the tale in his unwavering, world-weary drawl – was he reading the words from a prompt on the floor? – he exuded an air of bored neutrality that made it hard to summon a great deal of sympathy, let alone enthusiasm, for this pageant of misery. “Me, I just don’t care at all,” he sang in Men of Good Fortune, a line that resonated more powerfully than most.

Several of the songs, including Caroline Says and How Do You Think It Feels, were expanded to include long, strident guitar solos, a mixed blessing at best.

And although the show was executed with flawless precision, the sheer intensity had begun to weigh heavy on the soul by the time the ensemble reached the thundering climax of Sad Song.

Reed thanked his musical directors Bob Ezrin and Hal Willner, before embarking on encores of Sweet Jane, Satellite of Love and Walk on the Wild Side. Rarely has the mood at a rock concert lifted so swiftly or sweetly.

*Lou Reed plays Manchester Apollo, June 29; Hammersmith Apollo, June 30 and July 1

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