Product Review

Fragments Of A Rainy Season is the the first live John Cale album to feature him performing solo and “unplugged” – before that term became a mid-’90s buzzword. In contrast to the jaundiced punk truculence of Sabotage/Live (1979) or Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1986), Fragments gives us Cale at his most melodic and moving, a mellowed and certainly a soberer man in a Yamamoto jacket and a lopsided haircut running through a selection of his prettiest songs. The album features incredible versions of 'Paris 1919,' 'Dying On The Vine,' 'Chinese Envoy,' cover versions of the Elvis classic 'Heartbreak Hotel,' his devastating treatment of Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' and a suite of Dylan Thomas' works 'On A Wedding Anniversary,' 'Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed' and 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.'