Hard-Charging Lou Reed Strikes Powerful Chords

When Lou Reed acknowledges the approbation of a crowd, he does so by pumping his fists in the air and and then holding them overhead, like a triumphant prizefighter. It’s a telling gesture from an artist whose relationship to his art has always been pugilistic.

Reed revels in confrontation--with lovers, with drugs, with his own demons--but never without some ray of hope. Even his most emotionally destitute songs hold out some possibility of catharsis, through sheer guitar noise. At the Universal Amphitheatre on Wednesday, Reed and his three-piece band turned up the volume on Reed’s obsessions, ramming through recent material with the insistence of a jackhammer.

Over the course of a solo career that stretches across three decades, Reed has progressively chipped away at ornamentation (e.g., the near-baroque textures on 1972’s “Transformer”) to achieve the diamond-hard sound he has today. At Universal Amphitheatre, Reed focused most intently on sexual themes, singing clear-eyed tales of adultery and shattered romance while he and guitarist Mike Rathke burrowed into neo-metal power chords.

Occasionally, Reed plucked at his guitar as if it were a subway’s third rail, producing taut, wiry leads. It was a remarkable display of sonic aggression from an artist who refuses to let middle age soften his rough edges.

Second-billed Victoria Williams, on the other hand, is all soft edges. This cult heroine is one of pop music’s most guileless and gifted songwriters, an artist who isn’t afraid to revel in her own sense of wonder. Her all-too-brief set was a celebration of finding joy in things that truly matter--nature, friendship, family and even cherished junk.