JOHN CALE Schallplatten & CDs

Review: This is the second of three inventive and influential albums that John Cale released through Island Records in the mid-70s. The Velvet Underground founding member was in stellar company with Brian Eno, Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera and one of the most prolific studio session guitarists of all time, Chris Spedding, all appearing on the album. The album is stacked with bangers, but of note is the life-affirming and soulful 'Dirtyass Rock 'n' Roll; his cover of 'Heartbreak Hotel', which is one of the best covers ever recorded and 'I'm Not The Loving Kind'. The latter gained recognition most recently when the late, great Mark Lanegan covered it beautifully for his Imitations album. Cale will forever be a wellspring of inspiration.

Review: Domino Records embark on an ambitious reissues double-bill of John Cale's earliest solo records. Here - third to his debut record after his self-excision from the Velvet Underground, Vintage Violence (1970) (to which Cale was infamously disparaging in his later years, deriding his performance on the work as "masked" behind a disingenuous imperative to prove he could still write songs) and second to his Academy In Peril (1972) - comes his third and much better loved LP, Paris 1919. Released in 1973, Cale has regained ground here, still flexing a wonderful talent for songcraft, yet also an entirely new orchestral chamber pop direction, easily foiling the unflappable cool cat persona depicted on the front cover, and eschewing the dark experimentalism of his preceding album. Where it's not plush with string movements, Paris 1919 brims with softly-strung guitar arpeggiations and electric piano hooks, its placid easy listening approach much befitting of the Paris Peace Conference, and other related postwar drives to armistice, that bestruck the public imagination during the earliest post-war 20th Century.

Review: It's hard to feel 'meh' about John Cale. In fact, it's impossible. The Welsh musician, Velvet Underground alumni and composer has given us 18 studio albums, including June 2024's Poptical Illusion, and there's nary a misstep in the lot. His latest plays out like a warm bath full of dreamy optimism, a follow up to the highly collaborative affair, Mercy, here we see the super-talent adjust his focus and fly out alone to prove the point. And prove it he does. Across 12 weird and unarguably wonderful tracks, Cale manages to defy genres, flitting between chamber punk and beach pop, theatrical croon-dom and syrupy downtempo. While there are dark-er moods, 'Funkball The Brewster', for example, on the whole this is smile-inducing, if bat-shit crazy stuff, from start to finish.

Review: Mercy is John Cale's first new music in a decade, which is already a treat for the ears of his fans. And they are numerous given his former role as a founding member of the cult Velvet Underground band. The Welshman has remained a tirelessly inventive artist throughout his long career whether making gnarly rock, bewitching chamber music or raw electronic sounds. This record finds him crafting dead-of-night electronic sounds with their own sense of soul. Helping him make this beguiling mix of tender love songs and dark visions of the future are top talents like Actress, Laurel Halo and Animal Collective amongst many more.

Review: Vinyl Lovers present John Cale's, 'Fear (reissue)'. He emerged into pre-new wave weirdness with Fear, an aggressively wild record made with assistance from the likes of Eno and Roxy Musician Phil Manzanera. Clean production only heightens the anxiety inherent in Cale's voice and created by the skittering, modified guitar sounds. A brilliant record full of neat surprises and great, unsettling songs.

Review: This broadcast was first aired on French TV having been recorded at the Bataclan club in Paris, on January 29, 1972. It got a first official release in 2004 having been bootlegged for many years before that from a recording taken from the sound board at the gig. Fans of The Velvet Underground will know that this was the first time the group members Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico had all been up on stage together.