PARIS 1919

Fourth album from Cale and this album is a sort of return to his debut album, which I don't think much of. After two excellent albums (Church Of Anthrax and Academy In Peril), both full of wonderful and exciting musical developments), this album is definitely a letdown despite an encouraging list of song titles and a classy front cover artwork.

A thankfully short album consisting of nine songs, none of the four and a half minutes long with most of them being deceptively simple, some having again that typical US adult rock (the first few tracks on side 1), others being more in a UK pop mode: Greene is between Bowie and 10 CC, McBeth is in a Status Quo meets Sweet mode and Paris is in a Beatles greets Kinks mode. The main difference between this album and VV is that the present is well arranged and better produced, and this is due to LA (where it is recorded) and the musicians on it?. Although the first re-issues were quiet about this issue, we can see that the good guitars are Lowell George's

If John Cale made a bunch of interesting albums throughout his long and varied solo career (most notably in the 90's with his film soundtracks), this album is certainly not one of them and even if a proghead likes poppier material, I'd still warn you about staying away from this one.