Product Review

Welsh composer, viola terrorist, and art rocker John Cale remains a unique link between "dirty ass rock & roll" (as one '70s mission statement was titled), the avant garde and classicism--a droll, thoughtful musician who studied with John Cage, joined the Velvet Underground, and went on to craft a series of often divergent post-Velvets solo projects. Early projects that confronted the clash of classicism and pop head-on, like The Academy In Peril and the classic Paris 1919, which mixed string sections with electric slide guitars, gave way to more stripped-down, primal rock in the '70s, but Cale's music has always left a door open to musical and thematic invention. This intelligently assembled two-CD anthology offers a smart entry point into a beguiling maze of Cale personae. --Sam Sutherland