John Cale - POPtical Illusion (2024)

The follow-up to MERCY, released last January, spans 13 tracks and eschews the collaboration-heavy approach of its predecessor. The album makes use of synths, samples, pianos and organs through its various cuts. It was produced by Cale and his longtime artistic partner Nita Scott at the former's Los Angeles studio

Cale has often said that something shifted inside his mind during the pandemic, realizing that, nearing 80, he was living and working through something that many of his past contemporaries weren’t.

He wanted to document it. He wrote more than 80 songs in a period of a little over a year, collectively surveying the range of human experience in the process – humour bled into frustration, regret gave way to forgiveness, sadness tangled with surrealism.

Cale, a “hip-hop zealot”, was inspired by how the genre “wields technology to create multi-dimensional textures or build surprising melodies. ‘POPtical Illusion’ synthesises those emotions and enthusiasms into a dozen electronic playgrounds, Cale’s magisterial voice webbing across it all with puns and insights, grievances and quips, and some version of truth.”

davevr schreef:
Dit is één van de beste albums van 2024. Dat het niet meer sterren heeft, of luisteraars snap ik niet.