
JOHN CALE
POPtical Illusion (Double Six)
No-one asked John Cale to release a new album 18 months after his last one, not because this is an unwanted development but because what kind of monster would abuse an elder so. Yet this is precisely what’s transpired with the impressively badly titled POPtical Illusion, an entirely solo effort on the songwriting and singing front after acts like Animal Collective and Weyes Blood guested on 2023’s Mercy.
POPtical Illusion, though overlong at 13 songs and nearly an hour, is an effervescent and elegant set of electronic pop songs, Cale’s burnt-honey octogenarian voice sounding reflective without suggesting the imminent twilight. I’m Angry, a misleadingly-titled minimalist deep house opera ballad, is a real standout, though more often the arrangements are essentially rock-leaning in their layering of synths, drums and vocals, not greatly removed in spirit from Cale’s hot streak of post-Velvet Underground solo albums in the 1970s.
words NOEL GARDNER