“If you’ve done things you’d wished you’ve never done/Think of the things you’re going to do tonight,” John Cale sings over bubbly synths on “Davies and Wales,” a track from his 18th studio album, Poptical Illusion. The Welsh musician has never shied away from playing with textures and sounds, exploring chamber pop, post-punk, R&B, and just about every genre in between. And each of the album’s songs feels like a kaleidoscope of sound that ebbs and flows between serene resonance and hauntingly frantic beats.
No two tracks on Poptical Illusion sound alike, paralleling the sense of change and uncertainty that informs Cale’s lyrics. Opener “God Make Me Do It (Don’t Ask Me Again)” introduces this concept—more like a fixation, really—with layers of digitized percussion, steady synthetic echoes, and Cale’s slow, deep vocals, while the hopeful “Edge of Reason” is followed by the ironically titled “I’m Angry,” in which the singer’s voice drones as softly as ever.
The latter songs serve as a calming reprise before we’re plunged into the eeriness of the album’s back half. And yet, no song here sounds entirely dark and haunting nor bright and poppy. This tonal ambiguity is embedded within, albeit at different degrees, each track. The saturation of contrasting sounds—fast-paced drums layered over wistful synths or low, murmuring organs—cleverly reflects the unsettling nature of change that serves as the album’s core theme.
“How We See the Light” similarly sums up the album’s ethos beautifully: “Can I close another chapter/In the way we run our lives/More decisive in the future/Or deliberate in the end.” For Cale, though, this impulse for change isn’t a desperate attempt to reclaim his youth or heyday. Rather, Poptical Illusion embodies his curiosity, drive, and desire to explore uncharted territory, while offering wisdom that can only be attributed to his age. Cale doesn’t seem to care about relevancy. He’s just looking to continue growing.
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