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Dec 24, 2024 Web Exclusive By Austin Saalman

With his third solo effort, perpetually underrated avant-garde pioneer John Cale managed at last to reconcile the jagged art rock predilections of his oft-overlooked solo debut, 1970’s Vintage Violence, with the lush orchestral extravaganza of its successor, 1972’s The Academy in Peril. Cale’s contentious aesthetic dichotomy—between the gritty and saccharine, the penetrable and impenetrable—with which the artistically daring songwriter had been wrestling since his days as a founding member of now-mythical 1960s New York-based rock outfit The Velvet Underground, arrived at its inevitable head on the exquisite Paris 1919, which remains, arguably, his finest offering.

The album’s genesis, an undeniable product of the alienation and chaos experienced by its creator during his early post-Velvets career, found the 31-year-old Welshman transplanted to Los Angeles, sharing a studio with the likes of Little Feat’s Lowell George and Ritchie Hayward, and fueled by the effects of debilitating cocaine and alcohol dependencies. This history, above all else, renders the “pop” label, when applied to Paris 1919, disingenuous, as, despite its often accessible—by Cale’s standards—arrangements and richly baroque textures, the album boasts the same unabashed spirit of experimentalism and creative defiance found on those earlier Velvet Underground releases, as well as throughout Cale’s subsequent solo output. Of course, any “pop” sensibilities present are elevated to levels of consciously higher art, their floral-etched whimsies merely masking the biting wit and intellect of the album’s classically trained, literary-minded artist. Throughout Paris 1919’s 31-minute runtime, the listener will encounter passing references to literary giants Dylan Thomas, William Shakespeare, and Graham Greene, as well as to the eccentrically apocalyptic modern history of Western Europe, presented in Cale’s frequently cryptic and fragmentary verse. These swirling syntheses of beauty and madness, history and hallucination, mystery and revelation, render Paris 1919 a simultaneously enchanting and unsettling sensory experience.

Glam-inflected opening rocker “Child’s Christmas in Wales” pays frank homage to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, as Cale dispels the warm seasonal humor of youthful memory with dashes of subtle dread: “With mistletoe and candlegreen / To Halloween we go / Ten murdered oranges bled onboard ship / Lend comedy to shame.” Likewise, the devastating anti-folk ponderings of “Hanky Panky Nohow” swiftly deconstruct the grand pastoral myth, with Cale grieving “the sashaying of gentlemen” before retreating into distant memories of a postcard-ideal natural realm, isolated from the whims of men, insisting, “Those planing lakes will surely calm you down.” Though possibly a poetic indictment of industrial capitalism’s alienation of humanity from nature, it is impossible not to interpret “Hanky Panky Nohow” as the album’s most apparent “addiction” dirge, its sense of dissociation and dread in such lines as, “Nothing frightens me more / Than religion at my door” remaining as intimate to Cale himself as it is general to the larger human condition. Similarly, “The Endless Plain of Fortune,” on its surface a delirious account of European colonialism in South Africa, once again finds Cale wedding personal and historical tragedy, with the claim that “They would’ve played all night / Even with loaded dice” speaking both to the insatiably brutal nature of colonial greed and ultimately destructive pursuits of pleasure by addicts such as Cale. This point is ultimately made by the track’s haunting conclusion: “It’s gold that eats the heart and leaves the bones to dry.”

Nostalgic winter ballad “Andalucia,” easily Paris 1919’s pinnacle, is so tender in its wistful delicacy that one might be inclined to underestimate it, not immediately recognizing the track as the art pop masterpiece it is. Here, in the guise of the melancholic “Farmer John,” Cale pines after the elusive “Andalucia,” whose true identity is most likely that of the picturesque Spanish community of Andalusia. “Andalucia, castles and Christians,” sings Cale of the region’s distinguished scenery. “Andalucia, come to stay.” Few compositions within the history of popular music have succeeded in surpassing “Andalucia’s” pristine yet humble beauty, with such lines as “Needing you / Taking you / Keeping you / Leaving you/In a year and a day to be sure / That your face doesn’t alter / Your words never falter—I love you” remaining marked with such burning vulnerability and pure poetic intent that, even 51 years on, the track elicits a sense of ageless purity, Cale’s seemingly eternal longing confined to its own dusky realm beyond that of space and time. Here, Cale emerges, if only for a mesmerizing three minutes and 51 seconds, from the haze and delirium of modern history to linger above his listeners, themselves inexorably bound to the same implacable passage of time as the artist. Pasts and futures collide, the fabric of time unravelling, as Cale croons, “Farmer John wants you louder and softer / Closer and nearer then again.” Through the lonesome, snow-swept twilight, Cale remains, “waiting, later and later / Hoping the night will go away,” his optimism dwindling as his nostalgic condition blossoms into sorrow, the singer realizing that his fabled memory kingdom might never be restored. “Andalucia,” above all else, remains Cale’s major aesthetic and artistic achievement.

Elsewhere, the scrappy stomp of “Macbeth,” Paris 1919’s heaviest cut, reinstates Cale’s dedication to the grungy “literary” rock he once explored with The Velvet Underground, while the decadently polished baroque phantasmagoria of the album’s title track places Cale in competition with the likes of contemporaries such as Elton John. The latter track in particular serves as yet another significant artistic accomplishment on Cale’s part, it’s dazzling European flourishes and cheeky historical musings—its title alluding to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, following the First World War—finding Cale, “a disappointed proud man in his grief,” returning to themes of discontentment and malaise, this time among various nations in the encroaching shadow of World War II (“The Continent’s just fallen in disgrace / William William William Rogers put it in its place”) and modernity itself (“Efficiency, efficiency, they say / Get to know the date and tell the time of day”). As grim as this narrative may be, Cale’s lively sing-song proclamation, “You’re a ghost, la la la la la la la la la” succeeds in deceiving the inattentive listener into believing “Paris 1919” to be a relatively gleeful affair. The same is true of the subsequent “Graham Greene,” which, despite its swaggering art pop melodies, concerns, as Cale himself has stated, “the collapse of civilization.”

The chilly “Half Past France” carries an epic weight as its narrator, train-bound between Dunkirk and Paris, contemplates armed conflict and displacement, confessing, “I’m not afraid now of the dark anymore / And many mountains now are molehills.” The “war” motif is continued here, though it is Cale, not the narrator, who appears to be at his most paranoid and confessional. “But from here on, it’s got to be / A simple case of them or me,” he sings. “If they’re alive then I am dead / Pray God and eat your daily bread.” This sense of unease carries into Paris 1919’s eerie closing track “Antarctica Starts Here,” on which Cale draws artistic inspiration from Gloria Swanson’s iconic performance in 1950’s Sunset Boulevard. “The paranoid great movie queen / Sits idly fully armed,” he rasps. “The powder and mascara there / A warning light for charm.” Serving as something of a “comedown” from the album’s tingling, coke-addled glow, “Antarctica Starts Here” finds Cale at the end of his rope, the very walls of history collapsing around him, leaving both artist and listener to linger about the ruins. “Her schoolhouse mind has windows now,” he breathes, “Where handsome creatures come to watch / The anesthetic wearing off / Antarctica starts here…”

Domino Recording Company’s deluxe edition of this underrated 1973-released art rock gem encourages a new generation of listeners to bask in its bizarre, infectious, and worldly glow. Domino’s effort to remaster and release Paris 1919 as an attractive double LP is commendable, as the album is certainly deserving of such treatment, though none of the release’s bonus tracks—some rough demos and alternate mixes of certain album cuts—do anything meaningful to enhance the listening experience, in terms of context or intrigue. However, such an album as Paris 1919, bursting with context and intrigue of its own, requires no supplemental material to encourage appreciation of its beauty. Instead, the listener ought to experience Paris 1919 for what it genuinely is: an educated exercise, concise yet weighty, in 1970s avant-pop by a skilled artist whose tremendous contributions to the movement remain undeniable. (www.john-cale.com)

Author rating: 9/10