John Cale & the Heritage Orchestra play Paris 1919 – Royal Festival Hall, London, 05/03/2010

There is always a great deal of expectation when an artist chooses to look back at their back catalog. Sadly, very few artists are able to capture the glory of their “classic” record-performances as they pale in comparison to the remembered or revered original. The anger, hopes or loves of youth which fed into the record have grown old, or tired. So often, when presented with an orchestra to play with, things can go terribly awry. Not so in the capable hands of John Cale. Rather the careful and subtle arrangements lifted the source material of 1973′s Paris 1919 album in to a new realm, adding subtle dynamics to the likes of ‘Half Past France’, while the recreation of the orchestral title track was every bit as triumphant and celebratory as could be hoped for.

Paris 1919 is undoubtedly Cale at his most tuneful and accessible, complete with the title tracks “lalalala” choruses, the jaunty cod-reggae tribute to Chipping Sodbury that is ‘Graham Greene’, and the glamband stomp of ‘Macbeth’ (here moved from original running, presumably to end the set on an energetic high). Returning without the orchestra, Cale and his band took things in an altogether darker direction, rearranging the Velvet’s ‘Venus in Furs’ and merging it with a distorted version of Cale’s own ‘Rosegarden Funeral of Sores’. A harrowing industrial take on Elvis’ ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ moved proceedings still further away from the nights earlier orchestral pop reveries.

Tonight’s show took in everything from the poetry of Dylan Thomas (Cale’s setting of “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”), Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and the Treaty of Versailles to Elvis and industrial noise without skipping a beat. There are few artists with careers as multifaceted as Cale, and fewer still who can make a 37 year old album fueled by homesickness and cold war paranoia sound as fresh and vital now as when it was first committed to tape.