“Show Me You're Gonna Be The Sheriff Of My Heart” - John Cale :: “Artificial Intelligence”
Both transparent and aggressively aggravated at the cumbersome climate of the severity of the soul, the Welsh legend and co-founder of the iconic institution of the Velvet Underground, John Cale, surfed the decade of the 80s with an alchemical attitude rooted in his trailblazing punk efforts, while simultaneously navigating the hardships of fatherhood, marriage, the highs and lows of his career and the unfortunate addictions that in retrospective, were now catching up to his peers and the legacy of their middle age. Wrapping up the final production of “Camera Obscure”, which would be his longtime friend and musical partner, Nico’s last studio album, Cale returned to the lysergic nature of the lab to record his 10th album, “Artificial Intelligence”, originally entitled “Black Rose”, to nail down the ritualistic atmosphere of its small town dystopia and drawn out disconnection from the sincere nature of community, fatal fame and the phenomena of professionalism.
Calling on friends both old and new, Cale recruited brothers David and James Young, Graham Dowdall and Gill O’Donovan to help achieve the summation of the album’s explicit exploration into the digital macabre and ferocious nature of the future at hand and electronics of extraterrestrial excitement. As a hybrid figure coexisting on both sides of the galaxy's studio glass, Cale sets out on a personal pilgrimage to better his life after the fundamental fatality of “Artificial Intelligence” and the previous two releases, “John Cale Comes Alive” and “Caribbean Sunset”. Across the album's 9 tracks, listeners can anticipate the catharsis of his cosmically alluring credo, demonstrated in titles such as “The Sleeper”, the acoustic angelica of “Black Rose” and the UK single “Dying on the Vine”, before launching into a well deserved bout of dormancy that would take up the remainder of the decade.
But with great rest comes the restoration and reliance on meditation and the sometimes miraculous cure of desolation at that. As a romantic gesture-in-maturity, this fascinating insight into the musician’s personal archive of health, trauma and artistic integrity, reacts to the sting of the applied salt of life by quickly demonstrating the sometimes overlooked performance of production versus the instrumentation of intellect that Cale has so effortlessly mastered throughout his near decade long career leading up to this point. Whether an homage to the weather heart, or the replacement of its nylon strings, Cale has also captured the romanticism of performance poetry like no other. “Artificial Intelligence” may not necessarily be your immediate go to with an outstanding and unparalleled repertoire that features early masterpieces like “Vintage Violence”, “Paris 1919”, and “Fear”, but it deserves the multiple listens and undivided attention of his past, present and future fans if you truly want to inhale the legend’s melodic mastery of song and dance.
