Word: complex
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1970
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...John Cale left the Velvet Underground. His solo album, appropriately Vintage Violence, rejects further exploration in the maniacal realms for a complex, coherent eclecticism. The sensibility of Vintage Violence is nothing so much as non-violent. A sense of tranquility rather than jagged scorn runs through all of Cale's imagery...
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...
Then tension established by the contradictory lyrical elements is reinforced in the 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...
...merchandised in Ford commercials and films like Beach Blanket Bingo. Such travesties are happily omitted from the Rohauer restoration. Instead, there are the fabulous originals, now preserved on celluloid stock -works like The General, a Civil War comedy which could have been photographed by Mathew Brady, and the complex and hilarious Navigator, deservedly Keaton's biggest moneymaker...
BARRY GOLDWATER. "His backers said, 'Barry has an inferiority complex.' He did not. He had an inferiority simplex-the plain knowledge, never shirked, that he is a lightweight. And he loved his country too much to put it in the hands of a lightweight...