John Cale – Black Acetate

Although John Cale has long labored outside the mainstream, he’s created innumerable ripples within it. Besides his legacy as part of the Velvet Underground, he produced Patti Smith’s Horses and the Stooges’ self-titled debut. He’s collaborated with Brian Eno and covered Alejandro Escovedo, thus buttressing his influence on electronica and alt-country.

But despite his awe-inspiring reputation, Cale’s never been too hip for the room, and Black Acetate brings that accessibility to the fore. While 2003’s HoboSapiens was mostly a series of peripatetic ruminations, the new album is mostly an extrovert’s jukebox.

One track, “Perfect”, is actually radio-friendly (and Cale has made a video for it, suggesting designs on airplay). Against a riff so crunchy it could chip teeth and a refrain so catchy it qualifies as a benign virus, Cale’s booming voice revels in both the song’s tossed-off magnificence and its stone-stupid artlessness.

If nothing else, “Perfect” should encourage Weezer to try harder, while the similarly amplified “Sold-Motel” should remind Lenny Kravitz of the difference between revival and ripoff. “Satisfied” combines music-box melody and beatbox rhythm with the elegiac maturity expected of a man with full-on classical training, yet “Brotherman” conveys street-level strangeness via mumbled repetition and distorted instruments.

Like much of Cale’s work, Black Acetate doesn’t so much defy categorization as shrug it off. After four decades of creativity, the man himself has nothing to prove, which doesn’t stop him from transmitting pure enjoyment so that he can — just because he feels like it — prove everything all over again.