John Cale - blackAcetate

This album gets a 2, and the points are only awarding the first few tracks, and John Cale's name alone. I wasn’t expecting the return of the Velvet Underground, but I had high hopes when I heard blackAcetate sounded similar to Cale’s brilliant and criminally ignored Fear and Slow Dazzle era. It starts off with a very reminiscent sound, but then the record shifts unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It’s almost as if the first two tracks are updated outtakes from the 70s’—complete with rustic sounding drums, groovy falsettos, and mellowed distortion. I eagerly anticipated the next few songs to see if Cale could maintain an evolved sound true to his roots, but it's nowhere else on this record. Once blackAcetate sucks you in, it spits you back out with about forty-five minutes of uninspired electronic dubs and dull pop hooks—sadly, Cale’s vocals sound as strong and varied as ever, but a backdrop of sometimes lazy and just plain annoying songwriting unfairly comes with them. It seems like he is just tooling around in the studio with all the newest digital toys trying to remember what rock ‘n’ roll sounds like. Occasionally the electra beats and grooves rounding out the album provide a dreamy sonic space, but more often it all comes off sounding jaded and dated - an embarrasing attempt by another old rocker trying to sound current, or even (shudder) "hip." The half-way point of the album, “Perfect,” wins out as the most grating song of the year. Nothing else I listen to now allows me to forget the “Hokey-Pokey” style singing, “I can’t help it/you’re perfect for me/I’ve been waiting/you’re perfect for me right now.” It’s so obnoxiously poppy that I have to wonder if Cale means it as a parody. Actually, maybe all of blackAcetate is a parody because it's hard to take any of it seriously. [www.john-cale.com]