Insomniacs Shouldn't Sleep on Acetate...

Backtracking a bit to my twee '05 best-of list, I gotta admit I was torn about not including John Cale's wonderful 2005 effort, Black Acetate. It's an heroic, frequently startling collection, shifting tonal and thematic gears with sickening ease.

How is it that a 63-year-old codger's umpteenth album blows the shit out of 97.856% of the competition?

(Simple: he's genuinely gifted, and they fucking suck.)

So, why didn't I plaster Acetate to my lil' vanity plate? I wasn't totally sold at first. It took ten listens or so for everything to fall into place. Once I saw the larger tableau, Jesus, I was floored, envious, awed.

Why? His vocals are brilliant (both reckless and meticulously controlled) throughout. The patented Cale reverse-direction chorus/bridge constructions are strewn across its arc.* He displays an absolute assurance with contemporary studio tech aspects/DSP applications, etc. (Not that he's ever shown much of a knack for production.) And the songs... Holy fuck! Should the day come when a half-assed whore like Merzbow** can pen a "Wasteland," fuck, I'll recant all my blathering and join the lawn jockeys of Borbetomagus on fourth-chair Stephen Foster.



Black Acetate points out more than any other recent record why so much of the pointedly acerbic/dyspeptic/noise-y/"extreme"/experimental/G-Nation muzak out there is so fucking awful: where those purveyors thrash pitiably against form (while simultaneously hewing lemming-like to desiccated tropes), Cale caresses form as one would a favorite lover. Once his gnarled hands are around the throat of (your fave convention), call the coroner - it's dust.

(Bonus: his new band is killer. Thank Satan for guitar solos that sound like guitar solos are meant to sound - Manzanera'd and arse-f*ck'd.)

Support this doddering Welch sod and suck up Acetate immediately. I guarantee you 10,000% satisfaction. Given his patchy CV, however (The Dream Syndicate, VU, The Academy in Peril, The Church of Anthrax, Paris 1919, Fear, Helen of Troy, Animal Justice, Sabotage, Songs for Drella, Nico, 5 Tracks, HoboSapiens, The Stooges, The Marble Index, Desertshore, The Modern Lovers, The End, Horses, etc.), I can understand your trepidation...

TS

(* "Sold-Motel" has a particularly impressive prefigurative feint...)

(** Here note the difference between a huckster and a Greyhound depot hooker...)

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