Secret Corrida

Why don't I tell you about a song from Walking on Locusts that I love, then. Something that isn't schmaltzy, or draggy, or overwrought. Something like "Secret Corrida." The title, punning gently on "secret corridor," works well as a preview of the grace and ambiguity the track brings to its difficult subject matter. It's a meditation on the slaughter in the Balkans, you see, but Mr. Cale intentionally obfuscated it.

Not that the horror is completely removed. Cale describes a bullfight (La Corrida) in endless repetition. It's curiously bereft of action, just a sequence of still scenes: on the empty street on the day of a bullfight, listening to the crowd cheer; blood on sawdust, the door slammed shut, the crowd hungry for excitement (that is, death). There's no ranting about Milosevic, just meditation on human bloodlust and the monsters within us. And... though I feel cheated, a bit, by the evasion, I appreciate what he's done here in creating a subtle nightmare.

The music is gauze: somnambulant guitar coats the back of the aural picture, Cale's electric piano plays hypnotically repetitious three-note sequences throughout, and the vocal is restrained and nearly affectless. There are Spanish-inflected runs in the piano here and there. Trumpet (excuse me, mutantrumpet), gentle and as woozy as that guitar, takes the lead between each vocal section, and it nearly stops my heart each time. The Moroccan percussion works well on this track, adding to the circular and "out of time" feel.

This is one of the few pieces on the album where Cale's "less drama is more" approach really bears fruit. It's music for insomniacs, perhaps, but not for those who'd like to go to sleep. I love the song as a taste of what could have been: an album of songs like this would occupy an honored place in his catalog.

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So Much For Love

Do you want to know why I hate Walking On Locusts? "So Much for Love" might be the very worst track on it, but it's bad in a representative way. It's lumpen, leaden, vague, clichéd, tuneless. I don't get it. It's so banal lyrically nobody has even bothered to transcribe lyrics over at Fear Is a Man's Best Friend. I'll do it, though, just to prove a point.

Since you've been gone
Many things have changed
The days get longer
We spend our nights alone

Before you took
The time to see
You didn't let me down
You're a phone-call away

Now the time has come
To think of you a while
I cannot leave you now (I cannot leave you now)
Though the door is open wide (oh open wide)
You're in my mind and soul
And I've said it before

So much for love
So long for now
So much for love
It's been good to know you

We'll meet again
Where it all began
A souvenir of the past
And I guess it's the last

So much for love
So much for love

Let's start with the music. The song is a 70bpm affair, dilating time via its porn-groove bassline and pointless Kenny G-sax-like electric guitar wanking. The ubiquitous poor-quality electric piano (one of the major limiting factors on Cale's performances in the 80s and 90s) is über alles on this album, raining a golden shower of insipidity down upon the listener on this song as on most others. The horns that come in after the bridge don't do a thing to help, either. There isn't a single decent melody here, though the bridge might be acceptable in a better song.

And, well, the lyrics speak for themselves. There's none of the usual imagination, inventive detail, perceptive characterization. It's just one cliché after another. I don't get it.

A few possible explanation for the failings of Walking on Locusts (which is admittedly still half-decent - it's the half that isn't that kills me). Either John Cale circa 1996 was suffering from a catastrophic lack of taste, he'd developed a hatred towards his fanbase, he'd gotten the idea that only pap for the toothless sells today (not that this sold!), or he was trying to write from the heart for once and couldn't take the knife to himself. I have no idea which of these, if any, are true. But the result is uncharacteristically awful.

If you're getting into John Cale, avoid this album at all costs. It's a "for completists only" sort of album; it's a shame that it's among the most common finds in used music stores. The really mystifying thing is that not only was he proud of it at the time, but he was dismissive of his earlier work! Maybe it was just a momentary lapse of taste. I don't get it.

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Crazy Egypt

Did you know that David Byrne collaborated with John Cale? No? Well, "collaborated" might be a little strong. He played Adrian Belew-esque background guitar noise on "Crazy Egypt," the clean-up track on 1996's Walking on Locusts. He's given a writing credit, but I'm not sure why he would want it.

Walking on Locusts is by far my least favorite Cale album. I'll explore more of the reasons for this later, but this track displays many of the problems the rest of the album has. There's the stagey speak-sung vocal - Cale said that he didn't feel the need to go over the top on this album, but he does go over the top, just in a different way. The result is a sort of Broadway musical feeling. Ugh. The tune wouldn't be so bad if it were sung (parts were recycled for HoboSapiens's Things and Twilight Zone), but it just kind of lies there.

There's the curiously static, artificial-feeling backing track. Byrne's guitar work is great. There's nothing wrong with the rhythm guitar or the drums. Yet I just don't feel it. It feels both constructed and sloppy at the same time.

The lyrics aren't bad, really. They're written in the style of Warren Zevon: "Me, I'm walking out of here, emptying the till / I'm calling up your lawyers and giving you the bill." They seem to describe a divorce in progress, but then again maybe it's about geopolitics ("You buy me the election, I'll sell you Japan"). Whatever the case, they deserve a better song than this. The faux New Orleans theme of the album is pretty effective here, even if it relies on cartoonish clichés to set the scene ("Rolling through the Mardi Gras, madman on the loose").

The most egregious thing here is the woo-woo girls. After many of the ... choruses?, they scream out "Crazy!!" in the sort of voice that you usually hear from Rob Zombie's guitar. It's an interesting idea, I'll grant, but in practice it's silly rather than effective.

(N.B. this is one of my better-liked songs from Walking on Locusts.)

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