John Cale - Words For The Dying

Limited edition clear vinyl

First time vinyl repress of a 1989 John Cale album

Words For The Dying has at its heart "The Falklands Suite," Cale's baroque if heartfelt response to the Anglo-Argentinian War, which finds him setting the poems of his beloved Dylan Thomas to music. When building songs around another's words, the results often sound forced, but Cale does a magnificent job of compressing Thomas's lyricism into neat melodic phrases, themselves just components of a vast harmonic mega-structure scored for the USSR's Orchestra of Symphonic & Popular Music of Gostelradio. A project that could easily have collapsed under the weight of its own ambition is instead a late masterpiece, thanks to Cale's deep-seated compositional genius, and unobtrusive but resonant production from Brian Eno.

Side A

THE FALKLAND SUITE

Introduction

There Was A Saviour

Interlude I

On A Wedding Anniversary

Side B

THE FALKLAND SUITE

Interlude II

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Songs Without Words I

Songs Without Words II

The Soul of Carmen Miranda

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