MUZIK! Magazine

JOHN CALE
Honi Soit
[A&M SP-4849]

"Things are only going to get worse," John Cale once muttered, and indeed he's right. Art and reality have collided as a rock and roll star is cut down like a politician. Actors step into new roles, elected by a generation that grew up on their movies, to lead us through a new movie with an unwritten script. Meanwhile we, the audience, view these happenings without the blink of an eye. Yet some of .us do not. Thirteen men are arrested for guerrilla warfare training near the boundaries of a nuclear power plant. An unknown assailant is creating a name for himself while a city of children lives in fear.

Things are getting worse. The events are something we've walked into; it's too late for us to turn around, walk out and close the door behind us. Going through that door is what Cale's new album, Honi Soit, is about. In it Cale uses the door as a symbol to show us that there is a point in our minds that divides reality from illusion, uncertainty from perception and good from bad.

Cale has always taken listeners to the fringe with his music. From his early days in the Velvet Underground, through his "classic literature" phase, circa Paris 1919, up to the more recent Island trilogy, there has always been a sense of charismatic intuitive reasoning concerning the human condition in Cale which many have branded as a certain lunacy. Yet it's much more than that. Through his enigmatic madness comes the reality of a man dealing with truths while many of his warnings fall on deaf ears. It's an unsettling and disturbing situation for Cale, one by which he can only retaliate in his music with screams and the relief therein of knowing he has tried.

Cale sings in "Wilson Joliet,"

She was so afraid of everything she said

Since her mother told her why once upon a time

There was no rhyme

Before the clock slammed another door ...

Like ancestors in the ground

While me and nigger marched

Blasted our way out of here.*

Just as quick as everything can pass us by, everything can be stopped by time. Time moves quickly, attempting to slam the door shut before we can move through it. The only way to make it through the door is to fight back.

Fighting back however, "blasting out'' to get through the door, leaves one standing naked, "like yesterday/yesterday's streets were burnt down into shells." Such susceptibility only leaves us to be "shuffled like a pack of cards in the dead of night/Like lovers below Bataan, below the senses/Cause the senses smell of tears." To avoid being so vulnerable Cale resolves to private life" while juxtaposing that decision against the want of being vulnerable by continually yelling "me and nigger marched" in such a manner that this wroth indecision takes us through the door only for the most maniacal of reasons.

Things are different in "Magic & Lies." The song deals with four different characters, the main two being a "sweet thing" and "madame." Both do things their own way, both do anything they want/say. Yet the sweet thing knows wrong from right while madame breaks all the rules, thus their own approaches to the door are as different as are the eventual outcomes of their respective lives. For the sweet thing, "every night is midnight as they come to take her through the door/Of suffering as it is her own way out no matter how she feels/Her day is." In the madame's approach, "They climb up on her doorstep," Cale sings, "and rock around the clock tonight/And rock around again in spite of everything she's done she is forgotten." In essence, sweet thing, who knows wrong from right, has found her own approach to the door, and while it may be one of suffering rather than rocking around the clock all night, it delivers her to a better existence than that of madame's, who never makes it through the door and is forgotten.

The door, therefore, is also a threshold of emotions and decisions - experiences of life. In "Strange Times in Casablanca", Cale tells us it's "strange times . . . when people pull down their shades," that is, ignore reality. And once reality has taken a form we can't accept, Cale cites, "it's easy enough for us to look at each other and wonder why/We were to blame/Blame comes remorselessly transfixed/Like the sound of slamming doors." How many times has the maddening slam of a door snapped us back into reality, yet we still feel nothing? He continues, his voice roaring, "And doors have doors - have doors - have doors - have doors/Like companions have pets they sleep in each other's mattresses/Like maggots in despair/And bleed in each other's nests and make a mess of each other’s' snares." Strange times, indeed.

Musically the album is pure John Cale, with haunting melodies and thought provoking vocals. However, for this, (ale's first studio album in five years, he has made one very commercial in the album oriented rock mold, while the title cut is aimed towards the dance club market. "Honi soit" are the first two words on the English passport. Loosely translated they mean "punishment to those of evil thoughts". After many albums examining the thoughts which develop in our mind, Cale has finally offered us insight into how to deal with them.

-Tony Paris