120. John Cale
Roundhouse
5 February 2016
John Cale, perhaps sensing the residual energy of Patti Smith’s scorching Roundhouse set a few months prior, seemed keen to remind us that he, too, once stood at the bleeding edge of musical revolution. The problem, however, is that while Smith channelled the spirit of CBGB’s with weathered grace and genuine fire, Cale shuffled on stage looking less like the former Velvet Underground provocateur and more like an undertaker in a circus ringmaster’s coat. Cale always had the air of a thundercloud given human form and the look of a street-corner doom-prophet, and the years have not added any levity to his features.
This wasn’t a victory lap through the Velvet Underground’s warped back catalogue, nor was it an evening of rock ‘n’ roll reclamation. Instead, Cale stationed himself behind a piano, and proceeded to play a set of bleak, frostbitten laments to an audience visibly grappling with buyer’s remorse. The only real visual stimulation was a migraine-inducing projection of swirling colours, less Andy Warhol, more Windows 95 screensaver.
There were moments when the clouds parted. Selections from his reissued 1982 solo record Music for a New Society briefly reminded us that beneath the gravel and gloom there’s still a composer capable of genuine emotional heft. “If You Were Still Around” was as haunting as ever, a piano dirge that whispered like a ghost at a wake, while “Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend” let Cale off the leash long enough to conjure a little of that famed avant-garde mania, part unhinged piano assault, part performance art howl.
The night closed on a snarling rendition of “Pablo Picasso”, Cale’s sneering nod to the proto-punk DNA he helped splice in the Modern Lovers, but it was too little, too late. By that point, I felt a little like a hostage blinking into the lights, grateful to be released.
This wasn’t the work of a man reflecting on his past with fire still in his gut; this was a stark reminder that even the avant-garde can grow old, grumpy, and glacially slow. Where Patti Smith still burned with righteous energy, Cale seemed to revel in his curmudgeonly gloom, daring us to find the sparks of that past experimentalism buried somewhere beneath his sodden weight of ennui. We did not find it. What we found was a thunderously grim, old git.