Day 412: John Cale – Paris 1919

I’m sure there’ll be a point where regular readers will think “lady, what have you listened to?” But it is once again time for me to admit that I haven’t listened to something that every music nerd should have heard: reader, I’ve never listened to John Cale’s solo work. I need to fix that immediately — if the hipsters find out, they won’t let me into their bars anymore.

Album cover courtesy of Reprise

John Cale is a singer, musician, composer, arranger and producer from Wales, who’s probably best known for being a founding member of the Velvet Underground, but who also has a very varied and rich body of solo work that spans 17 albums. He released his third solo album, Paris 1919, in 1973, and it represented a sea change from the darker, more punk-oriented sound that he was known for. It features a more traditional singer-songwriter style, accompanied by the UCLA Symphony Orchestra.

While the album was partly inspired by the nuclear threat during the Cold War, as well as being named after the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles, Cale boiled the theme of the songs down simply: “All the songs are about this Welsh guy lost in the desert of L.A., feeling nostalgic about all the things he loved about Europe.”

Paris 1919 seemed like as good a place to start my John Cale journey as any, as it’s been called both his most accessible album and his finest work. I can see where they’re coming from: from an artist who’s known for being so avant garde, it’s a fairly straightforward album of baroque pop, but it’s also so high quality that I’m tempted to go dig through all of his weirder stuff ASAP. The instrumentation is lush and it’s sonically a gorgeous record, but the simplicity of it really puts the focus on the words. Cale’s voice is beautiful and I enjoy his style of writing where every song paints a picture that feels like a short story, sounding both wistful and happy at the same time.

I thought I hadn’t listened to much John Cale but I realised I’ve heard more than I thought, I’d definitely heard the titular track and some from his other albums, but clearly I haven’t listened enough. Paris 1919 is an album that I need to sit with and I would have listened to it again if I’d had more time, but I see myself returning to it with a bit more time to process. It’s a 9/10.