John Cale: Slow Dazzle (Island ILPS 9317)

EACH NEW instalment in John Cale's quixotic solo career has invited the sort of critical involvement and public indifference that have earmarked him as a classic cult figure. His anomalous credentials as musician and composer, and prevailing appetite for a taut and impressionistic vein of surrealism — both indications that Cale's inheritance is European and academic, rather than American and vernacular — have proved irresistible to the absorbed listener. His thorough eclecticism, frail voice and droll, cryptic persona have been equally forbidding to a broader audience.