Customer Reviews

John Cale: Words for the Dying

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Perhaps the most unusual recording in John Cale's catalog, "Words for the Dying" is an album in three parts-- "The Falklands Suite", orchestral treatments on the poetry of Dylan Thomas, "Song Without words", a piano chamber performance by Cale, and "The Soul of Carmen Miranda", a collaborative effort with Brian Eno that would lead to the sublime "Wrong Way Up".

Cale has a background is classical music and orchestra performance, so to find him composing for an orchestra is not all that surprising. The Falklands Suite works out to be a bit of an oddity-- performed with Cale as solo vocalist on top of a Welsh boys' choir and a Russian orchestra, Cale expresses himself musically in broad strokes, with a tendency towards lushness and drama and an unfortunate inclination towards somewhat irritating staccato punctuations. The arrangements themselves are fine (several of the pieces get a solo piano performance on "Fragments of a Rainy Season"), it's just that this doesn't seem to come together right. Either the orchestra feels lethargic ("Interlude II"), Cale sounds somewhat disinterested (the stunning arrangement of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night") or the choir seems to totally miss the intent behind either the arrangement ("Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed"). When you're very lucky, it seems all three of those come together ("On a Wedding Anniversary"). Having stated all of this, it makes for a reasonably pleasant listen, it's just that it doesn't really hold together.

"Song Without Words" is pleasant enough-- Cale's solo piano performance has a nice edge to it and his playing is lovely, although admittedly the composition is not particularly intriguing and the piece really doesn't seem to go anywhere. The gem of the album is "The Soul of Carmen Miranda"-- with a lovely atmosphere and an intriguing sonic landscape, Cale's somewhat disaffected vocal takes on a stunning resonance and both the wordless harmony between him and Eno (brief though it may be) and the viola line that follows it are nothing less than stunning.

Still, one track on a CD isn't really a good batting average. And while I haven't performed a side-by-side comparison, I'm not inclined to suspect that this 2006 reissue is remastered-- it sounds fine, but I don't hear a difference to speak of between this and the previous release (probably because there is none). My copy has had issues playing for a while, so I don't particularly feel I wasted my money (on the other hand, I never felt the burning need to replace that damaged copy before this reissue surfaced...). If you already have the previous issue of this recording, this one is probably worthless for you. If you don't, it's likely you don't need this-- this one is for Cale collectors and perhaps the completely rabid Eno fan.

This is one of my favorite Cale releases (Paris 1919 is up there as well). Sure, it's a bit of a hodge-podge, with lesser cuts filling out the cd. But it's worth the price for the Falklands Suite, alone.
For what it's worth, I'm a long-time Cale and VU fan, and one of the art students who was responsible for recording the "Valleydale Tapes".