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May 08, 2024 By Mark Redfern

John Cale is releasing a new album, POPtical Illusion, on June 14 via Double Six/Domino. Now he has shared the album’s second single, “Shark-Shark,” via a music video. Abigail Portner directed the video, which features Cale in a white suit with pink splotches on it, in an art gallery full of dancers. Watch it below.

“Sometimes you write a song purely for a mood,” Cale says in a press release. “‘Shark-Shark’ has two versions—both a nod to finding humor in music. When you’re feeling too much of the real world, the best diversion is something that puts a grin on your face. I don’t know how Abby and team kept this shoot together—being ‘unserious’ was a lot of fun!”

Portner had this to say about the video: “When I first heard this song the first thing that struck me was this vibe of gentle chaos, a chaos that’s not dangerous but a playfulness that happens at a sleepover party or in an ’80s comedy. I was in Oslo last summer with John and I had taken a bunch of pictures of the band in the National Museum standing in the hall of busts, looking very stark and cold. This idea popped into my head of what if the chaos in this song was sculptures coming to life and breaking all the rules! The concept of taking something like the National Museum or Swan Lake and having the art itself turn it upside down seemed fitting for this song.”

Cale previously shared the album’s first single, “How We See the Light,” via a music video. It was one of our Songs of the Week.

POPtical Illusion is the quick follow-up to MERCY, which was his first new album in a decade and was released in January 2023 via Double Six/Domino. That album featured a slew of notable collaborators, including Weyes Blood, Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso, Laurel Halo, Tei Shi, Fat White Family, and Actress. MERCY was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2023. A press release points out that POPtical Illusion “is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs.”

Cale produced the new album with longtime artistic partner Nita Scott in his Los Angeles studio. Cale was a founding member of the legendary ’60s band The Velvet Underground, but has often sought to push his music into the future, rather than reveling in past glories.

Read our 2023 interview with John Cale on MERCY.

Read our review of MERCY.

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