John Cale

A lingering scent of death. A decade over before it began. The New Wave ever more exhausted. The cyber-lovers of “Crash” atop the Tower of Babel.

Collapse. Tabula rasa.

Cream white, the color of unresolved afternoons. Alien pupils peering out from a negative. The name brushed across the center, big and bold: the only certainty left. There's no turning back.

A bare room. An electric piano, a synthesizer, an acoustic guitar. No, no viola, not for John Cale. Never again eternal music. Gone are the black angels and European children. No more sidekicks, horses or deserted shores. So long to the churches of anthrax, to the academies in peril, to Paris. Fear, though, that stays. New times, new songs. Songs for the end of songs.

Songs, but few choruses. Fragments of speech, halos of overlapping faces. Echoes of stories and of History. Messages of love and fear. Aborted melodies, instruments kept on a slow leash: post-rock before its own investiture, but already beyond it. The only music possible, in the cone of shadow dodged/scorned by the dying sun. Music for survivors, from the last laboratory left standing.

Prophecy-music. Dark (= hermetic, ≠ grim). Deconstructed, drained dry. Oppressive, powerless. Consoling, pacifying. Moving. Epic. A space probe in which to store what's left of memory, already irremediably compromised. Slaughtering in order to devour again.

A ten-piece lineup, the only even number in the lot.

1. “Taking Your Life In Your Hands”.

A warm hand in the freezing night. Searching for life in the most artificial timbres: a new humanism. A taste of phaser and palm muting, mirages of slide guitar and autoharp.

“Citizen Kane” and “Il Grande Quaderno”. Men in uniform wave and smile, the mother struggles to hide her tears. Everything burns, even the air. The children will stay, she won't come back. It doesn't end well or badly: it doesn't end at all, or rather, maybe it never began.

2. “Thoughtless Kind”

Chamber industrial. The cliffs of Wales carved by bagpipes. Scott Walker takes note.

The more we grow tired of our friends, the more we mythologize the memories shared with them. We tend to the darkness rather than the light inside those eyes: eyes that say nothing, like wounds of the imagination. Tears and laughter.

3. “Sanities”

A single tuba note, and finally the percussive epiphany. Prepared piano, cathedral organ, flamenco guitar.

He was afraid, he was ashamed. A choir of angels spat glory onto the stardust of his failure. Closed windows, oblivious midwives. A wedding in a tomb, the search for the river goes on. A strong, harsh, lovable world to die in, perhaps to the strains of Nino Rota.

4. “If You Were Still Around”

Drones and taps. Martin Rev and Vini Reilly.

If I were still here, I'd shout in your ears. I'd tear the fear off you in a thousand streamers. I'd let you taste the wind. You'd open your mouth to life, if I were still here.

5. “(I Keep A) Close Watch / Mama’s Song”

An old-style ballad. Yes, one of those that open and close the same way. More or less.

There's nothing to gain and nothing to lose, but things aren't the same. I still hear your voice at night, when I turn off the light. Drumroll, the firing squad is ready. But don't worry, I'll know how to take care of myself.

6. "Broken Bird"

Horror-movie fog. A waltz for harpsichord and synth trails. Wendy Carlos and John Carpenter.

She felt everything happening around her, like a broken bird. Her happiness faded at dusk. The fish and the heron. The stars shine on you too.

7. "Chinese Envoy"

Anemic 12-string acoustic, a bled-dry orchestra, Dylanesque inflections. The only real song here.

She was a princess versed in nothing, talking about things that didn't matter, and indeed no one listened to her. We would have lost everything if it hadn't been for Richelieu and his courtiers. Meanwhile the Chinese envoy went back to his pagoda with a broken heart.

8. "Changes Made"

Glam-rock in the age of banned carnivals. Ripped strings, cymbal crashes, the poisoned guitar of Blue Öyster Cult. An unexpected Velvet-style whirl.

When winter ends, you don't feel the summer breeze right away: you have to go through spring first. I live too much inside myself, a lot of things will have to change.

9. "Damn Life"

Ode to Extinguished Joy. Phil Spector on Mars. Europe sank long ago.

What's the point of this damn life? They'll eat you alive. I've lost her by now, she doesn't even know if it's day or night. But nothing will manage to hurt me. You reap what you sow, seek and you shall find.

10. “Risé, Sam and Rimsky-Korsakov”

Filtered words. Keys and fanfares, Sam Shepard and Rimsky-Korsakov.

I knew a guitarist in love with the voices on the radio, dreaming of a promised land on shortwave.

Eleven years later, the eleventh commandment. The numbers just wouldn't add up.

11. “In The Library Of Force”

Digital shivers. A gunshot, under a pale moonlight.

We kill in the world we live in, but you smile while the house burns in the name of God. The books fall from the shelves and read themselves, read you. William the Conqueror spills out from the pages of the past. Beaten, plundered, stoned, it's the Last Day of Language.

Thirty-four years later, everything as expected. The remake is pure formality.

And yet, whatever the Lady may say, Society still exists. So does Music.

to the things lost in the fire

Ride the wave of great music

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06/12/2020