John Cale

Don't be fooled of "POPtical Illusion", the playful title of of John Cale's second album in just over a year: he is still angry, still enraged by the wanton destruction that uncontrolled capitalists and unrepentant fraudsters have wrought on the wonders of this world and the goodness of mankind. In March, he will be back on the road in Germany, with eight concerts on the tour schedule!

"The right-wingers are burning down their libraries," Cale croaks caustically from inside a static storm during 'Company Commander', a dizzying centerpiece of disorienting sequences, frantic rhythms and overlapping drones. "Giving us the benefits and the doubt". Such moments throughout the hour-long and all-consuming POPtical Illusion reinforce the feel of of MERCY, Cale's much-lauded album of 2023, which was as curious as it was fierce. Guests like Weyes Blood, Animal Collective and Sylvan Esso amplified that feeling, heightening the unease and anger across generational lines. For his first solo album in seven years, Cale had a lot of unpleasant news to process.

But "POPtical Illusion" is by no means MERCY II or a collection of of discontinued models. In fact, in a career spanning more than six decades, Cale has never been one for of repetition. His avant-garde enthusiasm alternated with a proud restlessness between ecstatic classical music and unbound rock, between classic song craft and electronic reinterpretation. And so, on POPtical Illusion, he dispenses with the illustrious line-up to venture mostly alone into the labyrinths of of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that for Cale represent a kind of swirling hope, a wise insistence that change is still possible. "When you've done things of you wish you'd never done," he sings in the irrepressible 'Davies and Wales', an upbeat piece of new-wave-meets-Brian-Wilson delights, "think of the things you'll do tonight". Produced of Cale and his longtime artistic partner Nita Scott in his Los Angeles studio, POPtical Illusion is the work of of someone who ignores neither the anger nor the reasons for it, but instead tries to face the future - just as Cale has always done, of course.

John Cale has always been a musician of the times, helping to usher in titanic shifts in sound and culture. The groundbreaking drones of his Sun Blindness Music paved the way for The Velvet Underground. The wild rock of Fear and Slow Dazzle, not to mention of his productions with Patti Smith and the Stooges, shaped punk, post-punk and art rock for half a century. On POPtical Illusion, Cale once again shows himself to be a musician of the time.

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