John Cale - Mercy

For nearly 60 years, John Cale has been reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. Mercy, Cale’s first full album in a decade, moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; Mercy is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.

John Cale releases Mercy, his first new album of original songs in a decade, out via Double Six / Domino. For nearly 60 years, or at least since he was a young Welshman who moved to New York and formed The Velvet Underground, Cale has been reinventing his music with dazzling and inspiring regularity. There was the bewitching chamber folk of Paris 1919 followed instantly by the gnarled rock of Fear, the provocative and spare song cycle Music for a New Society followed more than 30 years later by mighty and unabashed electronic updates. Once again, here is Cale, reimagining how his music is made, sounds, and even works. His engrossing 12-track Mercy moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronics toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future.

Format / 2 x LP, limited edition translucent violet pressing 
Label / Double Six 
Cat No / DS122LP
Genre / Rock & Indie
Release date / 20 January 2023