Antarctica Starts Here: A Brief Review Of The Reissues Of Paris 1919 And The Academy In Peril By John Cale

In a way unique to him, John Cale blended the elegance of classical music with the genre-thumping of rock-and-roll. And never more successfully on the ornate Paris 1919 from 1973. That one, his third solo album, has recently been reissued with his second solo album, The Academy in Peril (1972) in fine fashion by Domino. Both records have never sounded better, and more than ever they seem evidence of the first peak of one of the most fertile minds in music in the last half-century.

The Academy in Peril, John's second solo album, couldn't be more different from his first solo record. Where 1970's Vintage Violence was mired in the artifice of rock, this one sees Cale bring his classical training to instrumental pieces, ones not quite classical and certainly not rock-and-roll. The tracks are accessible and smart, offering concise glimpses into Cale's approach, and up-ending expectations of what post-Velvet Underground work from the Welshman would be like. "Brahms" sounds like a piano quartet by Brahms so job well done there, while "Legs Larry at Television Centre" doesn't quite sound like the drummer of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band for which it's named, but it does mirror that group's refusal to play by established conventions. Elsewhere, the bright "Days of Steam" prefigures the compositions on 1973's Paris 1919, while "King Harry" serves up voices, percussion, and strings for a jarring journey. "Milton" and the bonus track "Temper" are piano-centered, with the material planted in more traditional territory. However much this is traditional however, is not taking into account just how radical this classical record must have sounded with The Carpenters and Yes in the Top 40 at the time.

The music of Paris 1919 hardly sounds even 50+ years later like what you'd expect from a record which contains Lowell George and Wilton Felder from The Crusaders. In fact, album number three from John Cale stands nearly in its own genre still. A defiantly reserved and precise album, Paris 1919 defines a sort of chamber rock which bands like The Auteurs and the Chamber Strings would look to many decades later. The material is lush in spots, then icily minimalist in others, but each individual composition stands completely on its own, and taken as a whole, the pieces make up what may be John Cale's best solo record. From the slide-guitar-anchored "Child's Christmas in Wales" and to the wry "Hanky Panky Nohow", a listener is rewarded with tracks which still seem utterly apart from anything being made in 1973. The title cut is playful, the melody dancing over string patterns before expanding into a big, bright chorus, while the spry "Graham Greene" takes a blues figure and re-arranges it into a chamber musician's idea of a rocker. The glacial "Antarctica Starts Here", one of Cale's best pieces of music as far as this writer is concerned, sways forward on the back of a fairly conventional keyboard hook. John's arcane, whispered lyrics give this an eerie air, and the tune, inexplicable on some levels, resonates with a kind of emotional warmth that is hard to place. Bracingly obtuse and resolutely recalcitrant to any idea of what makes a rock-and-roll record, John Cale here on Paris 1919 serves up his first masterpiece.

While one bonus cut, the previously-mentioned "Temper" graces the reissue of The Academy in Peril, there are a bunch of alternate takes and the like on Paris 1919. Of these, the most essential is a drone mix of "Hanky Panky Nohow", a mix which renders the number closer to the kind of material Spiritualized and Galaxie 500 would produce decades later. In 1973, Cale was as far ahead of the times as one can imagine, and resolutely at odds with popular music and even what passed for progressive music then. These extra pieces on this edition of such a seminal John Cale release provide glimpses into the creation of this entire work, one which seemed to mash a few styles into one, with the resulting art rock the most iconoclastic sort of tune-age you could imagine being released on a major label then. And while Cale would mix the lovely and the rough on subsequent offerings, it's fair to say that on Paris 1919 we are hearing the musician at his most successful, at least in terms of blending his classical trending and left-field sensibilities. He'd return to more classical forms later, but here he is practically inventing a genre all by himself. For that reason, and in terms of sheer listenability, Paris 1919 stands as the best record of John Cale's first solo years, and it's never sounded better than it does here.

The Academy in Peril and Paris 1919 by John Cale are both available on vinyl, CD, and download via Domino.

More details on John Cale via his official website.

[Photo: Ed Thrasher, 1972]