It's great to have at least some big beasts still among us. At the end of last year, belatedly I started listening to the latest Brian Eno album and was entranced for it. I'd avoided listening to it for some reason. I'm not sure why. Perhaps I feared that it was going to be too earnest. Too worthy. When I finally got round it was anything but.
A similar thing happened to me at the beginning of January with John Cale's somewhat surprising return to the Pop fray with MERCY his first record for many a year. Once again it took me a while to actually get round to actually listen to it but now I have I have I've found I've been gradually ensnared and find myself giving it a spin every few days.
Cale is an even more venerable big beast than Eno. Born in a Welsh mining village North of Swansea early in the Second World War, if anybody has a claim to having seen it all it's probably him. But MERCY doesn't on first play sound remotely sound like an album made by a founding member of The Velvet Underground.
Frankly Cale's solo albums rarely did. He always brought something entirely of his own to the table. Something Welsh. His singing and spoken voice have a heady grandeur. Think Richard Burton and Under Milk Wood. Anthony Hopkins.
Mercy has the surface feel of an ambient album but is immediately full of wonder. The wonder of being alive. Perhaps we never quite lose it. .Cale has always been the most enquiring collaborator since he first bumped into Reed, Nico and Warhol and here he teams up with Actress, Weyes Blood, Syvlan Esso, Animal Collective and Fat White Family among others. Though you might not always realise.
Anyhow, it's a startling record. And it becomes more startling with every play. We're just lucky to have the likes of Cale still amongst us.
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