John Cale shares ‘How We See The Light’ and announces new album ‘POPtical Illusion’

nme.com:

John Cale has announced his new album ‘POPtical Illusion’ and shared its first single, ‘How We See The Light’ – listen to it below.The Velvet Underground founder and Welsh musician will release his next record on June 14 via Double Six/Domino, produced by Cale and longtime partner Nita Scott in Los Angeles.

Pre-order/pre-save here.A press release says that “Cale has often said that something shifted inside his mind during the pandemic, realizing that, nearing 80, he was living and working through something that many of his past contemporaries weren’t”.It continued: “He wanted to document it.

He wrote more than 80 songs in a period of a little over a year, collectively surveying the range of human experience in the process – humour bled into frustration, regret gave way to forgiveness, sadness tangled with surrealism.”The statement also mentioned that Cale, a “hip-hop zealot”, was inspired by how the genre “wields technology to create multi-dimensional textures or build surprising melodies. ‘POPtical Illusion’ synthesises those emotions and enthusiasms into a dozen electronic playgrounds, Cale’s magisterial voice webbing across it all with puns and insights, grievances and quips, and some version of truth.”Cale has shared the album’s first single, ‘How We See The Light’.

He has also released an accompanying music video directed by Pepi Ginsberg of an unnerving day in the life of some papier-machê office workers.