John Cale needed to make a musical statement of this nature for a long time. Even fervent followers of the Welsh pilgrim’s progress were starting to grow a little jaded from seeing the man tote his Rainy Season show around the theatres, and while various film soundtracks, documentaries and autobiographies provided retro-perspective, he hadn’t come up with a record that flaunted his songwriting skills since 1989’s brilliant Words For The Dying.
But now there’s a new band, a new record deal and a new album, HoboSapiens, co-produced with Lemon Jelly’s Nick Franglen. The title, plucked from an unpublished Cale essay about Bob Dylan, is catchy but disingenuous: this is no collection of cave dweller railroad blues. Rather, Cale has transposed his facility with avant garde and classical techniques into laptop trickery. The result is not quite as cutting edge as one might expect – the marriage of lyrical smarts and ambient sparks often harks back to outsider artisans like David Sylvian, early 80s Bowie or Peter Gabriel.
For thematic inspiration, he’s plucked fragments of paranoiac post millennial queasiness from the ether and anti-dosed them with surprisingly upbeat settings: ‘Reading My Mind’ is a car crash fantasia set to radio pop arpeggios that joins JG to Glen Ballard. But then, just when you think he’s replaced ludes with Prozac capsules, he’ll drop a psychological art-heist thriller like ‘Magritte’, skittery under-surveillance misanthropy like ‘Look Horizon’ or the outright esoterica of ‘Twilight Zone’ and ‘Letter From Abroad’.
“Keep me away from a naked flame,” Cale sings, and despite the shiny surfaces and deceptively rinky-dink sounds, he never allows you to get too comfortable. It’s good to have him back frightening the children.