John Cale
(Picture: handout)At 80, John Cale has a lot of life to recall. That includes inventing art rock under Andy Warhol and alongside Lou Reed in The Velvet Underground, producing classic albums by Patti Smith, The Stooges and Nico, keeping his Welshness topped up by working with Manic Street Preachers and Super Furry Animals, releasing collaborative albums with Terry Riley and Brian Eno, and putting out 16 of his own. The 17th, Mercy, ends a rare quiet spell. It’s his first collection of new material in a decade, and includes songs that reminisce about his time spent with both Nico and David Bowie.
Otherwise, there’s nothing backward-looking about 12 songs that twist in all manner of directions across more than 70 minutes. Still best known (in instrumental terms) as a viola player, here he trades in electronic textures, drones and blips, layering sounds in a way that best rewards the owner of expensive headphones. A song with the memorable title Marilyn Monroe’s Legs (Beauty Elsewhere) spends two minutes hissing and scratching, and blipping like a hospital monitor, before Cale’s languid voice and a solid beat finally arrive.
It features the Wolverhampton electronic producer Actress, one of a number of collaborations with younger musicians who would all cite Cale as a major influence. Weyes Blood lends her soft tones to Story of Blood, which opens with a slow, bluesy piano line and ends up seven and a half minutes later almost drowned beneath the washes of multiple synthesizers. Scuzzy south London indie rockers Fat White Family are in there somewhere on The Legal Status of Ice, which considers our melting planet using ominous chants and a rare spell of rhythmic aggression.
Otherwise the pace is largely funereal but never dull. The psychedelic band Animal Collective do incredible things with sliced and diced vocals on the tense Everlasting Days. Cale, a vocal admirer of hip hop, constructs what sounds like a trap beat on Time Stands Still, where awkward hi-hats and gut-churning bass back up the respectively gloomy and celestial voices of Cale and Sylvan Esso singer Amelia Meath.
Night Crawling wouldn’t obviously be about Bowie if he hadn’t said so in interviews. “I can’t even tell when you’re putting me on,” Cale sings over a warm bassline and more skittering beats. Nico’s song, Moonstruck, is clearer: “You’re a moonstruck junkie lady staring at your feet.” They’re both gone and Cale is still here, still questing forwards with music that is miles from his origins but still uniquely his.
