The Michigan Daily-Saturday, May 9, 1981-Page 13 RECORDS Cale-tormented John Cale -'Honi Soit' (A & M) - What's this? John Cale giving it another try, on a major label, no less? I guess I shouldn't be so sur- prised, those personal demons fighting to be expressed were always what made it so necessary that Cale should produce music, and so they have made the release of this album just as inevitable. I guess I thought that his recent gravitation away from the mainstream and into increasing obscurity was a pretty much irreversible course. I'm glad that it wasn't. Mt X04CA LE- Not that a fringe position is necessarily alient to Cale. He's always been on the edge of whatever was going on. It's been a long way from his initial appearance with An- dy Warhol's (later to become ex- clusively Lou Reed's) anachronistic Velvet Underground through his ec- ccentrially classical-influenced albums to his Eno-abetted return to rock and roll in the mid-seventies. HONI SOIT seems to be a reassessment of that journey, an album of reflection as well as anger. Cale has coupled the tortured outlook of his last major album, Helen of Troy, with the cultured stylings of his classical period (e.g., the french horn-like trumpet intro to "Dead or Alive" and the intermit- tent harpsichord and viola throughout. True, there is none of the all-or-nothing, hell-bent ferocity of "Sudden Death" (off Helen of Troy) on Honi Soit, but neither does Cale compromise any of his visionary urgency on this release. As uspal, Cale's boozy baritone for- ces moments of gruff poeticism - made up mostly of pure, almost tangible conviction - out of the den- se, raining , instrumentation. Somehow, Cale always manages to sandwich his unusually erudite in- sights into the insatiable rhythm and swirling momentum of his songs. It is no mistake that many of his songs are inspired by literature (i.e., "Cable Hogue," "Hedda Gabbler," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"). His own song-writing style is thick with a literary flavor and symbolism that establishes an uncomfortable but intriguing relationship with the rock and roll that backs it. Blame comes remorselessly transfixed Like the sound of slamming doors And doors have doors-Have doors-have doors Befitting his classical training, Cale's compositions move for- cefully, cautiously, not unlike sym- phonies. Luckily, they don't fall prey to the hyped-up, bombastic mock- classicism of lesser "progressive" groups. Cale remains continually at- tuned to the gut of his music, the hands that pull the heart strings - hic dnr his vie hi-, musc genius SURPRISINGLY, the quiet moments on Honi Soit are the most affecting. On "The Riverbank" and "Magic and Lies," Cale's personal state-of-siege and accompanying world-weariness are most clear. As with the protagonists of "Magic and Lies," it seems that Cale has seen too much and felt too much, but is unable to stop seeing and feeling. Look at that young man with the tired eyes, He believes in magic, he believes in lies. The sad fact remains that the bit- tersweet emotionality of Cale's view and the relentlessness with which he expresses it will probably keep Cale from the public attention he deser- ves. (After all, to most people music is entertainment, while to Cale it is expression. The two seem unrecon- cilable.) Listening to a John Cale album is not often a pleasant ex- perience. It ism- more often a tor- turous, draining, touching experien- ce. But Cale's demons soon affect te listener - Once you have started listening, it is impossible to stop. In many ways, the tortured con- viction that Cale embodies is best conveyed live where the war-like in- tensity of his music andwgritty sin- cerity of his vocals meld into a new form of poetic fury unfettered by studio tampering. A chance to wit- ness this fury first-hand will present itself thistMonday when Caleap- pears with The Shirts at Second Chance. -Mark Dighton Loney's LP frivolous fun Roy Looney and the Phantom Movers - 'Contents Under Pressure' (War Bride) - Somehow I just can't take Roy Looney and the Phantom Movers seriously, but then I'm not certain that seriousness is their motive. Although virtually unknown the band has released three albums, the latest of which, Contents Under Pressure, is packed with adrenalin-based rock that is permeated by a magnetic rhythm guaranteed to set your toes tapping. Contents Under Pressure is as curious as it is enjoyable. Imagine bouncy, whimsical material, similar to that of The Shoes, performed at a semi- staccato pace with vocals that at times bear a striking resemblance to Devo. However, the thing that makes Roy Loney so attractive is the light-hearted style of his music. High-points on Con- tents Under Pressure include "Swinging Single," a bright calypso number complete with a sax interlude, and the title track, done with intriguing Buddy Holly-like crooning. THE CLIMAX of the album occurs with the cut "Too Funky Too Live" which contains comical-yet-true lyrics typical of most of the songs. Loney's dominant theme seems to be the bewilderment of the common per- son who really doesn't understand what is going on with the world. Loney puts these situations into a humorous light, complements them with catchy musical arrangements and comes up with clean, spirited fun. One thing is for sure, if you're looking for meaningfully serious lyrics, you can skip Contents Under Pressure. But if you have a sense for the curious and a keen sense of humor, Roy Loney and the Phantom Movers are for you. -Tammy Reiss ns woru s,12 vuiu , 211u5t. Cimino' s revised epic - not so bad after all Continuedfrom Page12 view. Why do directors who want us to revel in beauty always feel they have to cover their tracks with ugliness and violence? (The contrast is even more jarring in John Boorman's gaudily beeyoodeefull Excaliber.) It's just another harsh lesson half-learned, another log tossed on the fire. Some of Heaven's Gate's images do twist the knife of anxiety, guilt and pain a little for us: there are a few too many insuf- ferably noble immigrants, but sequen- ces like an attempted gang rape have a rawly unprettified aura of horror. Still, the movie's narrative conception is finally too shallow to make us really question human nature as seriously as is asks us to. THE SCENES - perhaps they should only be called "set pieces," since they're all elephantine - that stay in the mind most and best are, as a result, the sunniest ones. Cimino's roman- ticism is in hazy soft-focus, like his visuals - a little too creamy, naive, childish. But like me, you may be a sucker for such stuff anyway. Averill and beautiful local madame Ella (Isabelle Huppert) nuzzle like puppies, so cute and harmless and posed that their artificiality is more than halfway enchanting. In this sort of picture-post- card epic, the leads are (and perhaps should be) chosen for their looks, and Kris Kristofferson's great craggy face has been waiting forever to be made in- to as much of an icon as it is here. He still can't act-that toneless vocal delivery gives it away-and he appears remorely baffled, as if certain that he's in way over his head. He has a char- ming naturalness that was more than enough in Blume in Love, etc., but when he's had to act a part, you could see the doubt behind those suddenly blank eyes. He seems to be waiting anxiously for an explanation from behind the camera to put him at ease, scared that his limits might be exposed by working with a patented maestro (the way Ryan O'Neal in Barry Lyndon and Shelley Duvall in The Shining seemed to-strain for some sign from Kubrick). But Kristofferson makes a marvelous image. Huppert just has to be fresh, fresh, freshs flower child of the Golden West - flouncing around in the buff, sexually generous, a bit shallow. Averall and Champion both fall for this 1960's earth mother/virgin/whore abstraction of womanhood; we get tired of her fickleness in choosing between two two of them, but the character finally works through default - she's a mud- dle of overawed wishful thinking on the writer's part, but Huppert and Kristof- ferson look so right together that we have to root for them. THERE'S NO telling what exactly happened to Heaven's Gate in the process of losing nearly an hour's screen time, but this does seem to be the rare occasion when a studio's panicked editing might have done some good. The incoherency complained about isn't much apparent in this shor- tened version; everything fits well enough. The film's extravagance is of- ten as self-conscious as it is striking, but the big set pieces don't drag on eternally as one fears. The visual vir- tuosity seems better integrated into the general framework, less hollow, than it is in that other full-color-spread Americana epic Days of Heaven. Heaven's Gate is a big, muddy movie. It throws its weight around, im- pressively wwle you're watching it, but only fragments of movement and faces stay in the mind clearly. You can't dismiss it, though. The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate are both disturbing, problematical movies, at times devestating in the ruthless obscenity of their violence, thick in surface detail, with obscure layers of mythos and sim- plification underneath. Heaven's Gate doesn't have other movie's over- whelming immediacy (perhaps just because of the period distancing)1 yet it's probably an easier film to like. It shares most of The Deer Hunter's strengths and weaknesses, on a less rabid but no smaller level - it's gorgeous and underconceived, alter- nately poetic and pseudopoetic, lofty and juvenile, seductive and rather sexless. The cumulative effect is blun- ted, but-presumably pulled through by the clarifying reediting - it eventually works as a simple if sprawling melodrama. One hesitates to proclaim undeserved martyrdom for Cimino, but Heaven's Gate may, once the snarls of derision have cooled down in a few years, turn out to be one of the most widely un- derrated films of the decade. Begin your day with 764-0558