Word: cales
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Throughout the album, Cale blends his specific style of disjointed imagery with offset choruses of abstract solidity...
Only once or twice does Cale's sophistication degenerate into technical cuteness, and even then he recovers quickly, as in "Please...
That an individual songwriter should be able to maintain a consistency of style and feeling is not unusual, but in a solo album the establishment of such an identity too often comes at the expense of variety. Fortunately Cale is a complex man, and he has plotted Violence with a subtlety and protean vigor that overwhelms the threat of monotony. If Cale can be called a genius, it is because he achieves in a solo album the multiple development and reinforcement of feeling usually attributed to the best albums by groups...
...texture of Vintage Violence does remind one of Sgt. Pepper. Profound songs are interrupted by silly songs, which then turn out to be not so silly after all. Cale orders his songs in a natural pacing of theme and mood, leading up to the almost obligatory fast brawling rock resolution in the last cut. But in Violence the eclecticism is more pervasive than in Sgt. Pepper. Each song manages to fuse an intricate variety of styles and instruments into conventional but slightly twisted forms, "Cleo," for example, manages to sound like a peculiarly profound perversion of the Archies, Cale also...
...album's execution. Hardly one second of this album is static or unnecessary. The music either changes or grows more complex. Instrumental breaks are cut short before their completion dissipates the tension they generate. The songs don't even end, but rather fade out or just stop. Cale's vocals are undramatic yet precise-like the non-climactic songs they rechannel their energy back into paths that run through the entire album...