Audio CD review:
John Cale - HoboSapiens

John Cale - HoboSapiens

Band: John Cale Title: HoboSapiens Rating: Release Date: 18 November, 2003 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Zen 2: Reading My Mind 3: Things 4: Look Horizon 5: Magritte 6: Archimedes 7: Caravan 8: Bicycle 9: Twilight Zone 10: Letter from Abroad 11: Things X 12: Over Her Head

Customer Reviews Average Cale The first three tracks, Zen, Reading My Mind and Things are standard Cale numbers, with nothing extraordinary in either the lyrics or the tunes. This 2003 album by the art rock veteran is a great improvement on 1996's Walking On Locusts, but certainly no outstanding masterpiece. The same goes for The Look Horizon, a rock ballad that contains a spoken female vocal. Magritte has some moving lyrics over a jagged rhythm with innovative tempo changes and instrumentation, whilst Archimedes is a brooding experimental track embellished by great instrumental touches. The slow song Caravan is a poetic contemplation of death in moving lyrics and imagery, whilst the up-tempo pop song Twilight Zone mercifully breaks the mould with its buoyant vocals and lilting beat. Letter From Abroad has a harder edge with a complex structure and atmospheric parts, quite an experimental outing. In general, Hobo Sapiens is a quiet, contemplative album with many similar sounding mid-tempo tracks. It lacks the type of powerful rock song that is so brilliantly displayed on the Island Years compilation. I recommend that album or the other excellent compilation, Seducing Down The Door, if you want to own his best work. But Hobo Sapiens will satisfy the fans. . John Cale at work His movie soundtracks of the past 10 years have been wonderful, but it's an occasion when he fills a disc with tunes. There is no describing Cale, so I won't even try. Comparing his work to others, or suggesting he's copping someone else's style. . . none of that washes. Cale has created more new sounds than anyone will ever have time to emulate. Don't confuse what he's doing in HoboSapiens with anyone else's work. Listen carefully and you might hear the deep classical roots, the edge of pop, the raw rock & roll, the stream-of-consciousness lyrical quality of words and music, and Things you've never heard before. All that and more. I hate to compare any of Cale's records with any other, because he goes out on a limb every single time, but as a package HoboSapiens stands with Paris 1919. Maybe we're talking 2019. Cale seems to be saying he's found a new thread of life (Hey, kick me - what do I know but what I hear on the disc?), and he's spun it out into a powerful collection of songs that have the kind of integrity that Paris 1919 is justifiably famous for. There's not a weak cut on this disc; not one awkward transition. It all holds together like a living Thing. Cale has pulled rabbit after rabbit out of this hat, easily making this my record of the year. Practical Matters: I waited for a US edition of HoboSapiens, but goofy EMI released it in October 2003 in Europe and still can't see its way clear to get it out in the US. I finally sprang for the $30+ to buy one of the UK editions in June 2004. How ridiculous is that? If Cale got the respect he deserves, and a little promotion, this disc would be tuning up lots more ears. Shame on EMI. If they'd release it in the US, they wouldn't have to worry about copy protection on the Euro editions - people would buy a reasonably-priced US edition! For the, er, um, record, the edition I'm reviewing works fine on all my CD players and my pc's. The one catch is the bonus track, which appears before track 1. I guess you'd say it's track 0, but your player won't "see" it. The only way to get to it is to hit and hold down the reverse button on your player when the disc starts, winding the seconds backwards to the beginning of Set Me Free. Click too far, and you miss it. This very manual procedure is pretty ridiculous (try it at 65 MPH on the Interstate), and it does not work on any of my pc cd players - they won't go into second-by-second reverse the way a regular cd players does. But unlike some other customers, I've had no problem copying this cd so I can listen to the tracks on my pc, except that it's impossible to copy the bonus track using any normal means. Hint: make an analog-to-digital copy of Set Me Free by attaching a portable cd player to your pc. (Take that, EMI. You boneheads. How do you expect to sell CD's in the US if you don't issue them here?). A new era of excellence is expanded on.. As great as many records have been involving Cale, frequently they have been retrospectives (Close Watch, Fragments of a Rainy Season, The Island Years, Seducing Down the Door), collaborations (Songs for Drella with Reed; the Velvets live album; Wrong Way Up with Eno; Last Day on Earth with Bob Neurith. HoboSapiens (a title alluding to a Dylan-related essay from Cale's pre-Velvets days) is the full-length expansion on the new era ushered in by the brilliant 5 Tracks (also 2003). This release/fresh start for Cale (following a pilgrimage to Wales, which was filmed by the BBC & saw him collaborating/discovering contemporary bands such as The Beta Band, Lemon Jelly & SFA & the autobiography 'What's Welsh for Zen?')feels like his greatest album since Music for a New Society (1982)- though to be fair, it stands quite well next to many of his classic albums: Paris 1919, Helen of Troy, Fear, Sabotage/Live. . . HoboSapiens sounds very NOW- which is great- & there is a new political tract- perhaps related to the 9/11-themed Waiting for Blonde (from 5 Tracks, which fits more with Springsteen's The Rising than Daryl Whoreley & his juvenile take on US foreign policy & victimhood)- though which can be traced back to Mercenaries (Ready for War!). That Cale is ostensibly more poltical here, making references to Iraqi oil and offering lyrics such as "What a shame we carry with us the residue of fools/Instead of better wisdom or advanced tools" (The Look Horizon) & "Obssession with detail precision with terms/Remember you're speaking from the TZ" (Twilight Zone- think of the political speeches or terminology used in the Wars on Iraq and "Terrorism"). This is a sign that the world of art and culture, important to Cale as NY has been throughout his life, is ahead that of tabloid propaganda & political deception. Despite the notion that celebs who protest against the war are McCarthylite-traitors (whereas pro-war ones rock!!!), the themes apparent to the zeitgeist on this album will be those reflected more & more in records (see also Radiohead, REM, Travis, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Sylvian/Sakamoto's World Citizen etc) But there are other themes- notably art and philosophy- an array of references are made, from Archimedes to Magritte to Picasso. . . HoboSapiens has a thoroughly modern electronic sound, sounding easily as contemporary as Radiohead- though analogies that spring to mind include Dead Bees on a Cake (David Sylvian), Heathen (David Bowie), The Future (Leonard Cohen), Schleep (Robert Wyatt) & Tilt/Pola X (Scott Walker). Single Things (also reprised as Things X, in a style akin to several Neil Young albums) is a poppy classic, with a nod to the great, sadly late Warren Zevon & "Things to do in Denver When You're Dead". Old cohort Brian Eno appears, with giggling daughters, on diverting instrumental Bicycle after the intense worlds of Archimedes (sinister space rock) & Caravan (which has the cut-up feel of Heathen "Waiting for Godot in Niagra Falls" & builds up into a sonic overload worthy of Radiohead or Sigur Ros). Cale's vocals, as on 5 Tracks, is used slightly differently alongside the NOW-production- while the lyrics have the same ambiguous quality apparent in Scott Walker's work since "The Electrician". The Look Horizon is one of my favourite tracks here- though Letter from Abroad probably wins out- a looped-slice of world music & multi-track vocals fuse, prior to a sonic wall of sound coming in, a pulsing electronic-drumbeat and a hail of vocals intoning "Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan whatever happened to you. . . They're cutting their heads off in the soccer field. . . Taking them out in the elephant grass feeding them to hyeanas"- this is the ideal soundtrack to the atrocity coverage in the Mass Media relating to the images of war since 2001. The vocal distortions even recall Can's Peking O (from Tago Mago)at one point!! "This is a letter from abroad, life is cheaper back home"- heck, this is everything that people have said about Primal Scream's Xtrmntr/Evil Heat & sits up there with Fatima Mansions' Lost in the Former West & Cohen's The Future. Cale opts for poetic beauty in the end- with Over Her Head- which begins with a fading bell and a lulling piano (reminiscent of Wilderness Approaching from 5 Tracks & Radiohead tracks like Sail to the Moon & Pyramid Song), "She sees flames in the kitchen, it's a vision of hell. . . Like the pigeons in the yard she's getting fat on starch"- but where you might think this is a Satie meets Cale soundtrack to work as a balm after the preceding hail, you'd be wrong. Following the echoed intonations of the title, a rock-stomp almost glam kicks in, something as sonically pleasing as Queens of the Stone Age! HoboSapiens, as with the prologue 5 Tracks, is one of the highlights of 2003 to rank alongside The Love Below, Blemish, Stumble with Grace & Deloused in the Comatorium. Not that Cale has produced bad work, but this feels like one of his finest albums- easily ranking next to those highpoints in that brilliant career. Mindblowing stuff!. . You can see a complete list of all John Cale discography, or go back to the John Cale tabs