Live Circus / Live At Massey Hall

Two hawkish old rogue males weighing in with live dispatches, each a mirror image of the other. Cale, who over a decade ago delivered a classic live solo set in the form of Fragments From A Rainy Season, offers up a ragged and rough-hewn electric album, while Young, having delivered any amount of superior (and sometimes inferior) full band bootlegs in the past, exhumes a pristine 1971 acoustic set from the vaults, a taster for his long – and I mean long ­– forthcoming remastered archive box set.
Of the two, Cale’s is the more interesting but less essential artefact. There are inspired remakes of old standards: the always hypnotic ‘Venus In Furs’, a perfectly maudlin ‘Buffalo Ballet’, a conjoined ‘Femme Fatale/Funeral Rosegarden Of Sores’, and his creepy deconstructionist take on ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, once succinctly described in these pages by Henry Rollins as “Thelonius Monk… melting”. Cale, always an underrated vocalist, is in fine voice, although one sometimes wonders about the compatibility of his band, whose oddly ‘80s art rock shapes often render the more recent material anomalous, and are a little too slick for irreverent garage rock runs at Rufus Thomas’s ‘Walking The Dog’ and Jonathan Richman’s ‘Pablo Picasso’ (originally produced by Cale himself).
Young’s is the more definitive article. Recorded at a homecoming concert in Toronto in January 1971, the set falls squarely between the release of those bedsit staples After The Gold RusH and Harvest. The late, great producer David Briggs insisted that this album should have been released between the two, and, as ever, the man’s ears did not deceive him. Now canonical titles like ‘Down By The River’, ‘Ohio’ and ‘Cowgirl In The Sand’ are laser-focused and pressure-cooker intense, offering a timely reminder as to what distinguishes the likes of Damien Rice and Glen Hansard from the Jameses Blunt and Morrison. But Massey Hall also affords us the opportunity to hear Rathmines after-hours staples like ‘Old Man’, ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’ and ‘Heart Of Gold’ performed as new-minted. Young’s voice is extraordinary throughout, a queer, wavering tenor undercut by that percussive, elbow-heavy acoustic, and, as always, the droll between-song asides are good for a chuckle.
Consider this a vivid depiction of Laurel Canyon before the fall. For once, you didn’t have to be there.
Cale – 7/10
Young – 8.5/10