With the dissonant sound of his viola screeching mournfully and memorably across the first of The Velvet Underground's long-players, John Cale became firmly fixed in the imagination. He was the skeletal silhouette framed in black whose raven-hued, Prince Regent haircut topped gawky features that studiously avoided the Summer-of-Love sunshine in true New York, post-beatnik chic.
Since that time it has been easy to play train-spotter amongst the rock cognoscenti's pantheon of established classics. Look closely and you'll see his name crop up as producer on The Stooges epochal first album, on Patti Smith's Horses, and perhaps more surprisingly, on The Happy Mondays' Squirrel and G-Man (24-Hour Party People). Tune your ears to the frequency of that viola and you can even hear him add more than a hint of Caleness to Nick Drake's Fly.
Sandwiched between these commissions has been a solo career that established Cale as a truly original voice, both in terms of the music, and the unashamedly Celtic resonance of his voice. With product to promote (an EP already released, and an album Hobosapiens to be released later in the year) Cale is in London tonight at the end of a short UK tour where the faithful come to worship at the altar of this voice at Islington's Union Chapel.
Cale takes to the stage dressed like a peripatetic games teacher with a late brief, and his band launch into the new material from his latest EP, which is appropriately called 5 Tracks. The sound is a mixture of programmed slow beats, post-rock guitar slashes, keyboards that are high on atmosphere, and live clattering drums.
However, it is a sound that leaves little space to hear Cale's 9/11 musings that characterise the material on the EP. Indeed, there's just an uncomfortable hint of Peter Gabriel, at his conceptual / world-music worst. No doubt there's wisdom being imparted from the pulpit, but the session-musician choirboys are seeing fit to drown it out. That said, they leave just enough room for us to fully appreciate Wilderness Approaching, probably the stand-out track from the EP.
Things mercifully settle down in time for Dying On The Vine, and a steely Endless Plain of Fortune. The band spit full venom on a surprisingly furious Venus In Furs that's close to upstaging the original, with Cale's viola way out in front, dominating the mix.
In a bizarre turn of events, we're treated to the spectacle of a young guy bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young version of Erasure,'s Andy Bell who insists on back-flipping and arm-dancing his way throughout each tune, regardless of tempo. For those of you who'd never considered Paris 1919 a dance track, time to think again. Maybe Cale should be thinking of a Neptunes re-mix for his next project.
It's on the home straight that Cale, the band and the uninvited Bez-character come into their own - a patchwork electronic approach to Fear (Is A Man's Best Friend) segues sweetly into the aforementioned Paris 1919 and the encore of the power-chord boosted, Heartbreak Hotel.
Through the stained-glass the sun sets to leave us alone with the man sans band. Cale negotiates his 12-string for an intimate recital of Thoughtless Kind from the highly improvised (and very post-punk) Music For A New Society before returning to his keyboard for the inevitable (given the surroundings), religious experience of Hallelujah. Triumphant.
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