Label: Domino
Released 10/11/2024
Despite the album’s playful title, Cale’s second album in just over a year still contains the same feelings of fierce and inquisitive rage that were present in Cale’s much-lauded 2023 album MERCY, “a deeply atmospheric collection about encroaching doom and the life-saving power of art and community” (Wall Street Journal). He remains angry, still incensed by the willful destruction that unchecked capitalists and unrepentant conmen have hoisted upon the wonders of this world and the goodness of its people. But this is not at all MERCY II, or some collection of castoffs, as throughout his career of more than six decades, Cale has never been much for repetition. His vanguard-shaping enthusiasms have shifted among ecstatic classicism and unbound rock, classic songcraft and electronic reimagination with proud restlessness. And so, on POPtical Illusion, he foregoes the illustrious cast to burrow mostly alone into mazes of synthesizers and samples, organs and pianos, with words that, as far as Cale goes, constitute a sort of swirling hope, a sage insistence that change is yet possible. Produced by Cale and longtime artistic partner Nita Scott in his Los Angeles studio, POPtical Illusion is the work of someone trying to turn toward the future – exactly as Cale always has.
Track listing:
- God Made Me Do It (don't ask me again)
- Davies and Wales
- Calling You Out
- Edge of Reason
- I'm Angry
- How We See The Light
- Company Commander
- Setting Fires
- Shark-Shark
- Funkball the Brewster
- All To The Good*
- Laughing In My Sleep
- There Will Be No River
CD Only*