John Cale S/D

Domino just announced a new album will be released in January:

MERCY

20TH JANUARY 2023

For nearly 60 years, John Cale has been reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. MERCY, Cale’s first full album in a decade, moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; MERCY is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.

1. MERCY feat. Laurel Halo
2. MARILYN MONROE'S LEGS (beauty elsewhere) feat. Actress
3. NOISE OF YOU
4. STORY OF BLOOD feat. Weyes Blood
5. TIME STANDS STILL feat. Sylvan Esso
6. MOONSTRUCK (Nico's Song)
7. EVERLASTING DAYS feat. Animal Collective
8. NIGHT CRAWLING
9. NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
10. THE LEGAL STATUS OF ICE feat. Fat White Family
11. I KNOW YOU'RE HAPPY feat. Tei Shi
12. OUT YOUR WINDOW

Nookie Wood was pretty fascinating. Cale has a singular gift with lyrics that tell an authoritative and engrossing story from the first lines; you feel you're being "communicated to" even if the literal significance of the whole is obscure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgwOid8vdwE

still kicking myself that I didn't go see him when he toured for Nookie Wood (which I think is pretty good).

I tried to see him on the Black Acetate tour but tickets were sold out when I got to the venue.

into "story of blood"

really curious about that actress collab

Jan 11:

Today, John Cale unveils “NOISE OF YOU,” the new single/video off his first new album in a decade, MERCY, out January 20th on Double Six / Domino. “NOISE OF YOU” follows last year’s “shimmering” (Rolling Stone) single “NIGHT CRAWLING,” and “STORY OF BLOOD,” Cale’s “haunting” and “otherworldly” (The New York Times) collaboration with Weyes Blood. Sensual and svelte, “NOISE OF YOU” looks to be uplifted by our most ordinary but transcendent mechanism – love – as Cale croons about waiting to hear a paramour’s footfalls on the stairs during an idyllic winter. The accompanying video, directed by Pepi Ginsberg, features rare and never before seen images of Cale projected across spaces meaningful to his storied career.

Of the track, Cale says: “I don’t tend to romanticize the idea of love. It represents ‘need’ and that’s not something I’m particularly comfortable with. When it gets ahold of you though - don’t let go - no matter how many times you mess it up!”

Of the video, Ginsberg adds: “I was so inspired by John’s relationship to process and collaboration and wanted to mirror his approach to art in this video for ‘NOISE OF YOU,’ which John describes as a love song. Setting out to make a ‘moving’ portrait of John, we have mapped images and video of John’s life over his former home of New York City, creating a conversation between past and present, reflecting the way that distant, and sometimes dissonant, voices can reach across divides of space and time to speak their own language of love.”

In conjunction, Cale announces a UK/EU tour. Full dates are listed below and tickets are on sale now.

John Cale Tour Dates:
(Rescheduled Dates in Bold)
Mon. Feb. 6 - Liverpool, UK @ Philharmonic Hall
Wed. Feb. 8 - London, UK @ The Palladium
Fri. Feb. 10 - Bexhill-On-The-Sea, UK @ De La Warr Pavilion
Sat. Feb. 11 - Birmingham, UK @ Town Hall
Sun. Feb. 12 - Cambridge, UK @ Corn Exchange
Tue. Feb. 14 - Paris, FR @ Salle Pleyel
Thu. Feb. 16 - Karlsruhe, DE @ Tollhaus
Fri. Feb. 17 - Geneza, CH @ Festival Antigel
Sun. Feb. 19 - Frankfurt, DE @ Batschkapp
Mon. Feb. 20 - Dudelange, LU @ Centre Culturel Régional
Wed. Feb. 22 - Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
Thu. Feb. 23 - Antwerp, BE @ De Roma
Sat. Feb. 25 - Hamburg, DE @ Kampnagel
Sun. Feb. 26 - Leipzig, DE @ Haus Auensee
Tue. Feb. 28 - Berlin, DE @ Verti Music Hall
Wed. Mar. 1 - Prague, CZ @ Archa Theatre
Thu. Mar. 2 - Vienna, AT @ Porgy & Bess
Sat. Mar. 4 - Wels, AT @ Stadttheater
Sun. Mar. 5 - Munich, DE @ Muffathalle

NY Times interview is interesting

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/arts/music/john-cale-mercy-velvet-underground.html?fbclid=IwAR3U8OgNzH7GB0NyYM88JFOdqfIFcIhoYpBAyNMhT4hQvr-RFBJjcjAYcLo&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

I suppose the idea of a Cale vaporwave album is fascinating.

I lasted two songs. Each of which was seven minutes long.

Love: hearing his voice again, the fact that he is still making music & trying new things
Don't really love: the canned sounding drums on the track I heard :( why?!?!?!

otm -- the programming is dullllll

yes this is surprisingly uncompelling, though there was one song that sounded like Cale doing the Blue Nile which I liked.

Been curious to check this one out, but I think the bump this morning convinced me to stick with streaming it first.

I like this album. I listened to the whole thing very loudly on a long road trip over night. It's a whole vibe. Smokey, night time, solitude. Kind of what I hope new Peter Gabriel sounds like as far as production/programming. Nothing sounds cheesy. He's got great taste in sounds.

agree. I’m enjoying it.

I'm not crazy about the backgrounding of female vocalists. You got Natalie Mering on board and you mix her down?

I'm looking forward to the Jokermen podcast episode on this (they've been going through every Lou Reed and John Cale album, and it's been revelatory for me as far as Cale).

Thanks for the tip. The Honi Soit episode is hilarious!

Wait what?

Meaning I need to listen to that

if any of you are on rateyourmusic, please find "vintage violence" and downvote baroque pop as a genre. what the hell are they thinking lol.

instantly my favorite album of the year, but i smoke weed and love laurel halo

^^New Borad Description?

New Brad Description

Lol

thanks for the laurel halo recommendation I have not delved there

This one I liked on first hearing g but it is the proverbial “grower”.

It's growing, yes. While I do not like many of the collaborators IRL, I like how it nudges the late Cale approach. The consistency of prickly tone and mood is a strength here, like Music for a New Society.

"Smelling like an old adobe woman..."

I put this thing together for Paris 1919's 50th anniversary — a good listen!

https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2023/02/20/youre-a-ghost-john-cales-paris-1919-re-imagined/

sick!

Cool!

It's growing, yes. While I do not like many of the collaborators IRL, I like how it nudges the late Cale approach. The consistency of prickly tone and mood is a strength here, like Music for a New Society.

― bendy, Thursday, 23 February 2023 15:27 (six hours ago) link

I listened to about half right when it came out and couldn't really hang, I spun it again today and like it more, agree with bendy's assessment

xxxpost Thanks Tyler! Also, that deluxe Paris 1919 I mentioned upthread is worth checking out.

Nice career-spanning overview/interview plus chats with others (set this up as a free gift link so read away).

Or rather this is something of a follow-on to Zolandz's earlier piece, plus a playlist. Which works!

def a nighttime record but i also listened to it this morning while it was raining and it is exactly like viewing the melted world through a rainy car windshield

Meant to bump after seeing him live in February. This was a gig that was meant to happen in July 2022 but got postponed twice due to illness; no reason to think he doesn’t have a good many years in him but going in I knew there was a decent chance this would be his last uk tour, at least his last time visiting my town.

I only bring this up to emphasise how delightfully he gave us the complete opposite of a greatest hits set. They opened with “jumbo in tha modernworld”, almost everything else was from the new one. They slew tbh! He looked a bit frail at his keyboard peering through his readers at an ipad but the voice is the same as ever. At one point he said “this is an oldie but a goodie” and went into “Antarctica starts here” but a drastic unrecognisable* reworking

There was no encore tho I heard they were coming back on & doing “close watch” when they felt like it, which I would have loved

*not actually unrecognisable that’s just something ppl say about stuff like this (and “heartbreak hotel”) but when he announced this song the guy next to me actually muttered “you won’t bloody recognise it tho”

I saw him at Bexhill, really loved it. He played an amazingly loud pablo picasso and a load of hits besides, a few of which (endless plain for fortune, for one) had the melody demolished while others Chinese Envoy were intact and beautiful.

Just looked at a set list and the only old ones at mine were “rosegarden funeral of sores”(!) “guts” “cable hogue” and “half past France” which was the Paris 1919 oldie but goodie I meant to say instead of “Antarctica”

Oh there was also “villa albani” from Caribbean sunset!

Recent set lists look great, he’s playing “Ghost Story” and “Style It Takes” at some shows.

“Style It Takes” is awesome.

I’ll put the Empire State Building on your wall

It’s an all timer as is Chinese envoy!

Why did I wait until now to listen to this record? I adore it! It feels like walking through a museum exhibit of late-period Destroyer albums, with the ambient sounds of the different galleries bleeding into each other.

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/16/1194311683/avant-garde-music-legend-john-cale-talks-about-his-album-mercy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QPUwTNtmP8