POPtical Illusion by John Cale
In a career that goes back further than his 1967 and 1968 albums with the Velvet Underground, John Cale has presented several versions of pop music, including the lushly baroque title track of 1973’s Paris 1919, the novelty disco of 1984’s “Ooh La La,” and the glossy catchiness of 1996’s Walking on Locusts.
POPtical Illusion could be his thorniest pop, an apt follow-up to 2023’s challenging Mercy. Eschewing the collaborations on that album, Cale plays almost everything here, with modest contributions from longtime creative partner Nita Scott and longtime recording engineer Dustin Boyer.
Although the process is thus more insular than it was for Mercy, the music is subtly more extroverted: the wave-pattern bassline of “Calling You Out” and the invading-guerrilla drumbeat of “Company Commander” are immediately attractive and memorable, while the keyboard effusions in “Setting Fires” are friendly and goofy enough to have been pilfered from some 1980s Paul McCartney hit.
In a savvier universe, “Shark-Shark” could crack the Top 40, so trashily tuneful is its main guitar riff, so relentless is its machine rhythm, and so deeply does Cale sink his low voice into the title-phrase repetition that forms the song’s unwavering refrain.
Yet Cale retains the classical-music seriousness that has seeped into many of his greatest works: “I’m Angry” runs a background of prison-cell dankness behind an organ melody that elsewhere could be incidental music during a ballpark rain delay, and also behind lyrics that unearth the isolation and yearning within the anger.
Neither the intransigence of anger—of any emotion—nor the seriousness overtakes Cale, perhaps because at 82 he’s found sufficient wisdom to restrain and unleash himself at will. Pop music often labors under the notion that listeners desire empty obviousness. With POPtical Illusion, John Cale waves away that notion as though performing a magic trick.
Get POPtical Illusion at Amazon here.
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