John Cale's “POPtical Illusion” is the sound of an Eightysomething On a Hot Streak legend

John Cale is on a blistering hot streak in his 80s. When the Welsh pioneer legend was released Mercy last year, it was his first album in a decade. But he has already created another gem with POPtical Illusion, a masterful tribute to his bleak imagination. Six decades into his career, Cale is making music with a renewed sense of urgency—he hit a creative tipping point in the pandemic, in a frenzy where he wrote 80 songs in one year. However, he has reached one of the most adventurous phases of his always eccentric career.

Part of Cale's productive flourish comes from his realization that he has lost many of his friends, peers, and associates in recent years. Old Velvet Underground mate Lou Reed is apparently there, while Mercy he also had elegies mourning David Bowie and Nico. But it also comes from watching the world fall apart around him. Nothing like an apocalypse to give an artist like Cale a late-game burst of inspiration.

POPtical Illusion it's full of somber songs about a planet on fire, yet it's full of playful energy, mixing synths and guitars with electronic beats from an aging hip-hop fiend. But it rests on his unique vocal presence as Cale details his nightmares in his deep, heavy, dead Welsh brogue. As a guy who has always thrived on his negative mojo, these songs bring out all of his humor. “If you've done things you wish you'd never done,” he sings on “Davies and Wales,” “think about the things you're going to do tonight.”

At 82, Cale has built his entire legend on left-field surprises like this one, going back to his early days in New York's classic avant-garde scene as an apprentice to John Cage. He founded the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, transforming rock history with his experimental sensibility, not to mention his tumultuous piano on “I'm Waiting for the Man.” He has made his own mark as a singer-songwriter, especially the 1970s “island trilogy”. Fear, slow glare, and Helen of Troy. As a producer, he produced classic debut albums from Patti Smith, The Stooges and Modern Lovers. he and Reed collaborated on Andy Warhol's 1990 Envoy Songs for Drella. In his spare time, Cale did a very dark Leonard Cohen track called 'Hallelujah', revived it with his own 1993 version, then pitched it to Jeff Buckley and saw the song become a standard.

Mercy heavy on the special guests, as Cale collaborated with younger artists such as Lauren Halo, Animal Collective, Sylvan Esso and Weyes Blood's Natalie Mering. But POPtical Illusion bypasses this approach. It's more focused, with Cale and longtime collaborator Nita Scott based in his studio in Los Angeles. These songs vent even more political anger than Mercy. He rages about capitalism, the collapse of democracy, environmental disasters – he even calls one of the highlights “I'm angry.” On the seething “Edge of Reason,” he ruminates on the future, singing, “Looks like we've gone too far to fix it,” even as he asks, “Can you see the lights through the rain?”

Neither Leonard Cohen had such a creative flourish in their eighties, which makes sense since neither was exactly the starry-eyed idealist, even in their younger years. Like Cohen, Cale has always loved playing the role of the old man. As always, he is fixated on corruption, paranoia, and the dark side of human nature. He responded to the negative energy of the seventies with the famous saying in his song “Fear”, where he growled, “Fear is man's best friend.” But he sings the same line on this album—somehow, in 2024, that sentiment doesn't sound dated.

POPtical Illusion is more relaxed than Mercymore open, as in the clever synth-pop of 'Laughing in My Sleep', which harkens back to the classic Brian Eno collaboration Wrong way up, or the distorted electric darkness of 'Funkball the Brewster'. Cale closes the album with a beautifully devastating piano ballad 'There Will Be No River'. From another artist, it might have felt like a last word. But all up POPtical IllusionCale sounds fascinated to make the most of the future.