It's been a long time since I heard something as great as this. One of those hypnotic albums, maybe a little difficult to grasp at first, but one you're sure you'll come back to again and again in years to come. Something that has the power to really move you.
John Cale seems to be constantly torn between the experimental and the melodic and this album is a good example of this. It's very deconstructed at times but harmonic at others, often within the same song. It takes real talent to be able to walk the thin line between harmony and disharmony and to create songs that work. If you go too avant-garde and experimental, you're gonna lose your audience, or your audience will lose its grip on the song and turn away. Cale can do both: avant-garde and melodious music. He seems attracted to both: the beauty of the simple chord progressions of rock as well as the evocative power of atonal composition.
Cale's voice is very prominent on this record and he pushes it further than on anything else I've heard by him. Often the voice provides the song's main melodic line and it is sometimes left naked to hold up the record after an instrument fade out and before another one makes its entrance. It manages brilliantly.
The lyrics to some of the songs are provided with the cd reissue. Most of the songs deal in images and impressions rather than identifiable situations. One or two songs are linear but most are adaptable, they can't be tied down to a particular situation or reality. What comes through are the feelings they express: fragility, very often, torment, solitude, sadness…

copyright: Marc Marnie

Track by track

"Taking your life in your hands" opens the album in a slow, lulling mode. It's a fragile song, both fragile and well-constructed at the same time. It sometimes sounds as if it's about to stop, or fall apart, but it stays together providing a vulnerable mood. It blends melodic moments with bizarre sound effects and fragile, isolated, high-pitched piano parts. What's it about ? I couldn't tell you but it seems to involve elements from childhood which could explain the vulnerability.
"Thoughtless Kind" has an off-kilter metronomic beat and disharmonic sound effects, odd piano notes, and hammering sounds. The voice carries the song through and provides the main melodic line. During the chorus the melody of the voice is augmented by keyboard and synthesiser. The voice is then naked, once more, and then subjected to the sound of a man laughing mockingly, some weird whispers and finally, by bagpipes. What's it about ? Hmmm, good question.
"Sanities" is another very fragile number. Like in the opening track, it seems to be a childhood thing. Singing about the mother, failing to meet the mother's expectations. Again, a piece that builds up a whole atmosphere and conjures up feelings of melancholy and hurt. The song is a trouble one, with weird drum rolls, disharmonic strings, a distant piano, out of sync backing vocals and a kind of church organ that that emerges from time to time. At times it's a bit like some of the Nico stuff, like the material written and produced by John Cale for Nico's legendary "The Marble Index", another great album. Maybe the song should have been called "insanities" but then that would have been a bit obvious, wouldn't it ?
"If you were still around" is a fantastic number. The main instrument is a slow, full organ that's kept simple and not allowed a lot of variation. This produces a great overwhelming sound. It's a sad song of regret bordering on insanity. The broken voice is fantastic. The lyrics start with the recognisable before moving into the surreal, perhaps a sign of the protagonist's despair. Although the voice is, of course, very different, the organ and the intensity of emotion is reminiscent of another great artist: Robert Wyatt. The same degree of longing and pain. The progression of the lyrics is similar to something Wyatt could have written, too.
"(I keep a) close watch" is also a great song. With the previous song, it justifies the album price on it's own. Perhaps the most "linear", "conventional" track on the album it also has the easiest text to understand. The voice and a repetitive piano progression are the main elements of the song. Again, thematically, it's sadness, regret, isolation and vulnerability.
"Broken bird" walks the fine line between harmony and disharmony. A song of fragility, in the vein of the previous two, it's painted by musical touches. At mid-length it launches into a jumpy Beach boys style repetitive organ pattern. The voice is at the centre. It breaks and moves onto dangerous territories, past it's limits, becomes nasal and extremely expressive.
"Chinese Envoy" has a fragile, strummed guitar rhythm. It also includes melodious strings. What's it about? Who knows.
"Changes Made" has a heavy rock guitar intro and backbone. It sounds a bit like a track from Cale's "Fear" album. A heavier song but, surprise, surprise, there's still a fragility that counterpoints this hard rock aspect. In the background, a repetitive piano note or chord rumbles along. Screeching sound effects are mixed in with a cutting guitar solo.
The leitmotif of "Damn Life" is a famous classical piece, I am told it's "ode to joy" from Beethoven's 9th. Cale plays a deconstructed version of this that moves, mid-length, into repetitive piano chords and a jumpy organ melody, then back to the "trashed" version of "ode to joy". Looking at the lyrics, I can only imagine the use of "ode to joy" is ironic. The words are strong and bitter, recalling Cale's famous "punk" vindictiveness.
"Risé, Sam & Rimsky - Korsakov" has Risé Cale (I don't know the relation to the artist) reciting a poem over what is probably Rimsky-Korsakov. The tale of an isolated person. A man obsessed with the sound of the radio.
"In the Library of Force" is the most experimental track on the album. The lyrics are deconstructed, there's a lot of "space age" sounds and echo effects, disharmonic notes, booming passages, sometimes between some of Scott Walker's stuff on "Tilt" and some aspects of experimental Jimi Hendrix pieces such as "and the gods made love".  The voice is strong, involved, expressive, alive and possessed.
The album finishes on a clear piano score. Slow, delicate and beautiful.
 
 

The Wall?

For the sake of discussion, I'm going to pull a far-fetched comparison between this and another album, not too distant chronologically. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" on which I have already written a page I'm not too satisfied with.
I was once told by Mr Jones, an inspector when I used to be a teacher, that I shouldn't compare things that were totally different. I didn't listen then, so I won't now.
Of course, Roger Water's "The Wall" and John Cale's "Music for a New Society" are two very different things altogether. For one thing, one is a commercial calculation of dubious merit, whereas the other is a great art. Still, I'm going to make this comparison because there are qualities, that I tried to attribute to the Pink Floyd album, that were due to my adolescent memories more than to the actual album. These qualities are present on "Music for a new society". Where "The Wall" is overproduced, manipulative and calculated, "Music for a new society" is genuine and sincere.
Judging from the titles, both albums range seems pretty large. "The Wall" is a big concept thing about life, the universe, and everything, and "Music for a new society" can be said to have some ambition in its title too. However, everything works better on the Cale album because the artist has made this album himself with no hot-shot producer Bob Ezrin breathing over his shoulder and adding easy effects.
Childhood trauma, despair, solitude, insanity: all these elements present on "The Wall" are equally on "Music for a New Society" only here, they sound genuine. Art instead of commerce. No cheating involved. No quick buck made. No film made out of "Music for a new society". The broken, tormented voice of "Broken Bird" or "If you were still around" are done with credibility on Cale's record, whereas there's a dollar sign, and a goal of maximum returns hanging over the head of "The Wall". Roger Waters wouldn't have been able to introduce experimental elements into his music. Even a touch of disharmony would scare the conservative potential buyers away. Cale wasn't scared to do this. It was part of his music. Part of his art. So naturally, his record has a greater evocative power than Waters' one.
Of course, "Music for a new society" is also a great album, as "The Wall" is a somewhat dubious one, because Cale has great talent whereas Waters is just a guy who hit the mainstream with a couple of half-decent ideas and managed to make it pay.
All I wanted to say, by this long digression, is that "Music for a new society" does what "The Wall" promises but does not achieve. "The Wall" pretends to be genuine, but fails. "Music for a New Society" is the real thing. Buy it. Don't buy "The Wall".
 
 

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