Oh, this isn't a very dignified way to enter the new year, with a strained falsetto and a Beck-lite ironic-funk rhythm track. Outta the Bag isn't nearly as clever as Cale seems to think, seeing as he chose it lead off his weirdly paced blackAcetate. But is it enjoyable?
To me it certainly is. The adventurous and restless vocal melody is very appealing once one adjusts to the multitracked falsettos in Cale's timeworn voice. The different layers of instrumental funk are pure ear candy, the instrumental drop out a minute and three quarters in is awesome, and so is the monotone rhythm guitar chord chop that starts at 2m40s - like one of Neil Young's infamous one-note guitar solos, allowing the rest of the song to rotate around it. And the pure daffiness - bird chirps, the "the birdies sing: woo hoo hoo" coda - is quite welcome, fitting as it does with the album's goal of puncturing inflated perceptions of Cale as artiste.
The live version loses a lot of the fun but gains a little live energy. I don't know if it's a worthwhile trade.
The lyrics aren't half bad either, though not revelatory. It's Cale's take on "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" - delivering the bad news to an unfaithful partner, maybe. The words are spiky and passive aggressive and a good mixture of vague and specific. There are some evocative lyrics. I can't complain!
In particular, I really like the way it continues a two-decade chain of references. More on this next time.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Outta The Bag
Monday, February 11, 2008
Woman
I admit, John Cale tends more towards "relationship" songs of the tragic, regretful, angry, &c. nature than he does towards the "love song" per se. Most serious songwriters do, don't they? Because art loves conflict, and love and lust cause as much conflict as any other human feelings - no surprises here.
But Cale does put some uniquely weird spins on things. He can write a love song revolving around the hostility of the outside world, a common enough trope; but (giving him as much credit as possible) he seems to plant clues that argue against the hostility of the outside world, that even imply (stretching, here) that the hostile wasteland is the unavoidable - maybe even desirable - result of the forces of love.
(studio version)
"You're ignorant. You're cool. You never learned to say you're sorry."
No real idea nor little interest about who it's actually about, but... well... it says something that somebody made this video. The thought had occurred to me, too.
(live version)
Monday, January 28, 2008
Brotherman
I write reams of this shit every day.
Thanks, J. That makes my job easier. "Brotherman" is a track I possibly should be embarrassed about - does he think this is rap? But it's too weird to be purely midlife crisis genrehopping: it's a self-mocking rumination on the songwriting process. The narrator, John Cale or not, seems to be writing about a drug deal that might be a sting. But he's mocking himself the whole time, saying sardonically, "This is just part of the magic; I write reams of this shit every day." On the other hand, he's not above a little credit-taking: he's very proud that it may be shit, "but you're feeling it!" With the namechecking of Timbaland and the Neptunes he did at the time, one wonders if it's not some sort of semi-affectionate parody of the genre.
The monologue is delivered over a bed of mostly synthetic noise that's somewhere between an ersatz hip-hop track and one of Cale's atonal live eviscerations of some poor innocent song from his back catalog. Most notable is the interplay between the silly, buzzing "bass line" and intermittent electric guitar strums. It's... an acquired taste, but one I usually like enough to listen to. Without the wry vocal, though, I doubt I'd take the time.
However, it is a unique and fecund moment on blackAcetate (an album that admittedly does feel like midlife crisis genrehopping). It's a track that many critics reviled, a few like, and probably nobody but Cale really understands. I don't know if it's meant to be serious or a pisstake, but I think that ambiguity is the point. Very uncomfortable.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Perfect
blackAcetate is an album of funny contrasts. After the ethereal "Gravel Drive," Cale tosses in one of the album's most rudimentary garage rock tracks, "Perfect." That's not meant as insult, but it is strange. There's nothing dangerous about this music: the underlying song is a poppy little confection about compulsive love of one form or another, the rocking is restricted and somewhat ironic, the drums don't do anything subversive. I think it's a shameless attempt at getting on the radio. There's nothing wrong with that. This one pops into my head more often than anything else on the album.
The real meat of the song lies outside the verses and chorus. The growl and stop-time delivery on the first bridge, "I've- been- wai- ting- for- the- mo- ment- uhhhh" works beautifully. The lyric on the second bridge is my favorite in the song, and the melody attached to it is really charming: "And I'm sitting next to you / in the corner of the room / getting writer's block from calling you / is all I wanna do." And on the third bridge, martially rigid in its chant of "It's a different kind of love," Cale vocals overlap and rise above you like a vaulted ceiling. Finally, the coda, repeating the same lyric in a completely different way, wholehearted and enthusiastic: "It's! A! Diff! Rent! Kind! Of! Love!" The song is bursting with odd little bits of melody - the subversion is in the song's construction, rather than the performance. Well played, Mr. Cale.
Though a few of lines give it body, Perfect is in the end a slight song lyrically. About some kinda love in old age. There's not that much emotional heft to it: the verse lyrics are so generic and interchangeable our man seemed to be rewriting them on the spot when he performed the song on Jools Holland. But the video, allegedly the first released promo clip in John Cale's career, effectively shows the darkness latent in the song's premise. I feel that the song's only half-complete without the death-and-decay-obsessed video, described here as "disturbing, like pre-Eraserhead David Lynch." Watch it if you can. (Sorry, it's in RealMedia. I'm working on getting it converted so I can put it on YouTube. Any suggestions?)
Anyway, the video made me think that the song was about procreation: about seeing your children grow up and have children of their own. It is a different kind of love! The song lacks the edge of eros; it feels paternal and proud rather than seductive. I hear it addressed to a young granddaughter. Odds are that interpretation is way wrong (the more conventional reading fits better with the general theme of the album) but I like it dammit and I'm sticking with it.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Sold Motel
Into the West. The most recent of Cale's trail songs and gunfighter ballads, Sold Motel is also the most contemporary and the most surreal. It describes a land of motels, Tommy Hilfiger couture, "beach-blanket bourgeois sunning themselves." But the chorus clues us in:
"Send out the messenger, pick up the word
Wild Tchoupitoulas, have you heard?
Send out the messenger, pick up the word
General Custer, have you heard?"
Clues us into what, precisely, I'm not sure, but whether he's talking about Indians or the Neville Brothers in the chorus, the song feels of a piece with earlier Cale Westerns. It's a calculatedly Badass lyric, in the tradition of "Guts" and "Fear" and "Gun": "Down that way they see death everyday, in one form or another / They're no different from there to here, they've just learned how to handle the fear." It doesn't have the emotional heft of those songs, but it's a good lyric full of great sounds.
The song starts out with a rather stereotypical-sounding choppy garage-rock riff. ("Stereotypical garage rock" being one of the dominant sounds, but not the only one, of 2005's blackAcetate - one of the reason the album sounds so uneven.) But the sound gets weirder and weirder, with pitchshifted backing Cales all over the place - and then you hit the angelic choir and strings on the middle eight. Then a guitar solo that briefly turns into a trumpet solo (and back). Take that, Jack White. It's a great production job that survives the heavy sonic layering.
An all-time great song? No. The best on the album? Probably not, but a lot of fun. He performed an acoustic version at the Paradiso in Amsterdam back in 2004. Have a look.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wasteland
I don't want to offend anyone here, but blackAcetate almost strikes me as Vintage Violence, part the second. That is, while a pleasant listen, it's strangely insubstantial for a Cale album. I won't necessarily turn it off, but I listened to it only a few days ago and simply don't recall most of it. Also, while Violence has about five songs I really enjoy, Acetate boasts only one: "Wasteland."
It starts off all ghostly and shimmering, with a single curlicue of piano, and lulls the listener into expecting something by say, Enigma. Or maybe Delerium. Something that belongs on that compilation featuring "Tubular Bells" and the "X-files" theme that I used to see hawked on television adverts. Then the rhythm track kicks in, and Cale's inimitable vocals let the listener know that Sarah MacLachlan is not going to be popping up on this one.
Cale takes the listener on a trip through a hot and cold wasteland, a place of volcanoes, dry riverbeds, missing dinosaurs, and the ghost of yesteryear. That's all there is to it, really. The chorus is as straightforward as Cale ever gets: "You comfort me/comfort me/hold me in the dark." The level of vocal intensity is static, and so is the backing track-- there is not much development here; it's a snapshot rather than a story. But the wavering curtains of synth and the evocative piano add a layer of atmosphere, and there are nice strings on the instrumental break and some interesting guitar at the end. There are woo-woo girls, yes, or rather "na na na" girls, but Cale uses such additives with more consistent success than any artist of his generation, and they don't ruin anything here. Cale's voice shows its age and wear; he's a little hoarse, and if he doesn't engage in the old histrionics, it's likely because he can't.
And that's it. So what makes "Wasteland" any good? I don't believe that all Cale is good Cale, after all. Well, I enjoy it because it is atypical Cale. Instead of something so deeply weird and idiosyncratic that it's hard to imagine anyone but Cale even doing the song, this could easily be used on a film soundtrack. This is where I again perceive a parallel to Vintage Violence: we're being treated to Cale the performer rather than Cale the performance artist. This isn't "Guts," or anything of the sort. It's impressionistic, but in a universal way; instead of genuine volcanoes out the window, it's clear Cale is living in an emotional wasteland, and enough of us have been there (or think we have) that there is a way in to the song. And the path in doesn't require a reference book.
And, this being a Cale song, I'm not convinced there is anyone actually there to hold the narrator in the dark. I think he's alone with the dead dinosaurs, and I like it that way.
