Album Review: John Cale, Davies And Wales

Second album in a year from Velvets stalwart One-time enfant terrible of alt-rock, Welsh rare-bit John Cale – now the grand old age of 82 – is back with his 18th solo album and his second in 12 months, following last year’s well received Mercy.

Cale hit a heady creative streak during Covid, writing up to 80 songs in a little over a year. What’s perhaps surprising is that much of this material is the most accessible of his career, during which time he was mostly content to remain an idiosyncratic outlier – Lou Reed famously sacked Cale from The Velvet Underground for his “out there” ideas.

Recent single ‘Shark-Shark’ is catchy and cacophonic at once, while the poptastic ‘Davies And Wales’ is a synth-driven ride down a 1980s memory lane, with touchstones like Scott Walker and even Howard Jones.

He channels Blue Nile frontman Paul Buchanan on crooning torch ballad ‘I’m Angry’, and shakes hands with the shade of Leonard Cohen on the mid-paced tattoo of ‘How We See The Light’.

There’s a glimpse into Cale’s more madcap side on the frantic ‘Company Commander’, not to mention the unusual time signatures of the trippy ‘Setting Fires’. ‘Laughing In My Sleep’ and ‘Calling You Out’, meanwhile, juxtapose balladry with skittish beats. Having lived over eight decades, it would be easy for Cale to give in to cynicism at the modern world, but instead he remains hopeful, insisting that “We can reverse the hate” (‘Edge Of Reason’). Can someone please put this man in charge?

Rating: 7/10

Check out Davies And Wales below: