THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES
JOHN CALE
Mercy DOUBLE SIX/DOMINO
Veteran experimentalist ventures far out on a hallucinogenic journey.
By Tom Pinnock
“I can’t even tell when you’re putting me on/We’ve played that game before”
IF rock fully sparked into life in the mid-’60s, then those pioneers are now well past collecting their pensions. Some are gone, of course, others creatively spent. A select few, over the last few years, have entered a new creative realm: here, the white-hot urgency of youth is regained, this time tempered with the wisdom of age and the bittersweet passing of time. The results have been stunning: there’s Rough And Rowdy Ways, of course, and Blackstar, along with Leonard Cohen’s final trio, Roy Harper’s Man & Myth, McCartney III, Bill Fay and Mavis Staples’ recent work, and so on. When an album may be your last, there’s every reason to not go quietly into that good night.
When a latterday masterpiece is a chance to either distil your craft or launch into wild new adventures, it’s no surprise which of those Cale has gone for on Mercy, his first album since 2012’s Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood. If a reminder is needed, this is the experimentalist who left Wales for New York City, who played in La Monte Young’s Theatre Of Eternal Music, who brought much of the pioneering squall to The Velvet Underground and changed rock music, who stuck with Nico and helped her make some incredible solo albums, and who produced pivotal records by the Stooges, Patti Smith and Happy Mondays.