"This is a song about my favourite painter," announces John Cale. "Andy!" yells a cheeky voice in the crowd, meaning, of course, Warhol. "Nice try," quips Cale in return, fantastically deadpan.
The song in question is actually Magritte, which joins Pablo Picasso in the pantheon of Cale songs named for painters. It's one that probably only Cale could get away with. Magritte, a hushed, dreamlike song that suggests the feeling of tiptoeing through a gallery at night, considers the place of art in a society or under a regime that doesn't value it ("Somebody's coming that hates us"). You feel as though Cale's songs should be protected in their turn. No one has his ability to mix sentiment and discourse; to be dumb and intelligent; to sometimes playfully confuse the two. His art-rock often really rocks.
Cale is possessed of one of the great screams, as good as Little Richard's or that of the Pixies' Black Francis. It's there in The Ballad of Cable Hogue. It sears through the climax of a bruising Leaving It All Up to You, Cale's band scything away behind him. Best of all, it cauterises Cale's sublimely wounded, desperate cover of Heartbreak Hotel, which is an object lesson in how to cover a well-known song and make it your own.
There's something utterly magical about seeing this bluff Welsh bloke with the build of a rugby player sing a delicate ripple of a song such as Set Me Free, whose lovely, chiming chords recall the Velvet Underground's Sunday Morning. In Gravel Drive he seems improbably vulnerable, pleading: "Leave me a little of your smile." Undimmed, Cale remains cherishably unique.
