Chris Connelly sets 21-track Lou Reed tribute ‘Doo Wop in the Dark’ for 16 October
Chris Connelly releases “Doo Wop in the Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed” on 16 October 2026 via Shipwrecked Industries on digital, CD and vinyl.
Cover photography: Derick Smith
Four years after his Nico record, Chris Connelly has returned to the Velvet Underground orbit from the other side. The Edinburgh-born, Chicago-based post-punk and industrial singer releases “Doo Wop in the Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed” on 16 October 2026 through his own Shipwrecked Industries imprint. The album was announced on 18 August 2026 and runs 21 tracks that set Connelly originals against covers drawn from across Reed’s catalogue. Pre-orders are live on Bandcamp in digital, CD and 12-inch vinyl editions.
What Chris Connelly put on ‘Doo Wop in the Dark’
The record opens with an “Intro” and closes on “One Too Many Mysteries”. In between, the Reed material reaches from The Velvet Underground years into the solo catalogue: “Real Good Time Together”, “Black Angel’s Death Song”, a paired “Sister Ray / The Murder Mystery”, “The Bed”, “Rock and Roll Heart”, “Dirt (Uptown/Downtown)”, “The Bells”, “Doin’ the Things That We Want To” and “Dime Store Mystery”.
Connelly’s own compositions carry the biographical thread, among them “Cerletti’s Way”, “Bye Bye Johnny Viola”, “A Difficult Man”, “Nothin’ but a Rock Song”, “Babyface”, “House of 70s”, “The Rachel Papers”, “I Shared My Veins”, “Doo Wop My Future” and “Magician (Internally)”.
Connelly produced the album with Alan Holden Berliant. Chris Bruce produced four tracks: “Babyface”, “Bye Bye Johnny Viola”, “Doin’ the Things That We Want To” and “One Too Many Mysteries”.
Connelly sings and plays guitar, harmonium, bass, keyboards and glockenspiel; Bruce adds guitar, bass, keyboards, pedal steel guitar and programming; Berliant contributes guitar, keyboards, bass and programming. Jebin Bruni plays additional keys on “Bye Bye Johnny Viola”. James Scott, of The Joy Thieves, mastered the record at Populist Recordings, with cover photography by Derick Smith and layout by Kimberly Blessing.
Lou Reed biographer Aidan Levy, author of “Dirty Blvd.: The Life and Music of Lou Reed”, supplied a line for the album page: “To put it simply, no Lou Reed, no Chris Connelly […] this is the best kind of tribute album, in which we see how Lou Reed made Chris Connelly possible.”
‘House of 70s’ sets the album’s period
Connelly published the video for the introductory single “House of 70s” on his YouTube channel on 18 August 2026. Rather than describe the song in musical terms, he places it in a specific New York moment:
“The 1960s hippie dream burned out, Altamont in the rear-view mirror, while the queens, the uppers, the downers, and the streets are brought to life by Lou’s pen and guitar, a remorseless sarcasm cutting down the competition with a switchblade, Taxi Driver in drag, chain-smoking and blasting the radio at 3:00am.”
The new album follows the same method as 2022’s “Eulogy to Christa”, on which Connelly wrote about and covered material connected to Christa “Nico” Päffgen, the singer who appeared on The Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut. Reed died in 2013.
About Chris Connelly
Chris Connelly was born in Edinburgh and joined the punk band Rigor Mortis at 14. That group became Fini Tribe, the Scottish outfit whose 1982 to 1987 material was collected last year on “The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987”, released in October 2025. Connelly left Fini Tribe for Chicago, where he became a fixture of the Wax Trax! circle: he sang with Revolting Cocks, contributed to Ministry, and from 1991 worked in Pigface, Murder Inc. and, later, The Damage Manual.
His solo career started in parallel. “Whiplash Boychild” arrived on Wax Trax! Records on 1 March 1991 and set the template he has followed since, with the industrial rhythm section replaced by songwriting closer to Scott Walker, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen. William Rieflin drummed on that debut.
The last three years have been busy. “The Lives and Loves of the Serial Homesick, Volume 1” came out in April 2024. Connelly discussed the Fini Tribe reissue with Andy McGregor in The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: Chris Connelly and Andy McGregor on Edinburgh Post-Punk, Art, Rebellion, and Staying Interested in March 2026.
In April 2026 he sang on The Joy Thieves release ‘The Wrong End of Your Rifle’ with Chris Connelly, preview ‘Apocalypse Pending’, ahead of the band’s “Apocalypse Pending” album on 5 June 2026, and he also took part in Martin Atkins‘ celebration of the 45th anniversary of Public Image Ltd‘s “The Flowers of Romance” in April 2026. “Doo Wop in the Dark: A Portrait of Lou Reed” is his first solo studio album since 2024.
Support Side-Line
More people read Side-Line than ever, and there is still no paywall and no advertising. Readers pay for it instead - from $5 a month.
Why we ask
Advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations we have not put up a paywall, and we refuse to add annoying advertising, so we need to ask for your help. Side-Line’s independent journalism takes time, money and hard work to produce, and we do it to push the artists we like, who are equally fighting to survive.
Handled by PayPal.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
