KEY POINTS:
Normally when a 65 year-old singer opens his set with an Elvis Presley song, you know you are somewhere safe.
But when avant-rock figurehead John Cale does it -as the first number in an unnerving riveting performance marking the New York-based Welshman's first appearance in Auckland of 20 or so years -it comes out a little different, even by his own contrary standards.
One of the best known songs of Cale's low-profile post-Velvet Underground solo career is his grinding evisceration of Heartbreak Hotel.
But these days Cale has further Frankenstein-ed the song into a bigger uglier, jerkier monster, complete with Darth Vader vocodered vocals.
Coming after the droning intro music -presumably recalling Cale's viola-playing classical avant-garde beginnings -Heartbreak Hotel sure acted as a warning: Don't expect this to be an evening of cosy left-field rock nostalgia, even if it didn't stop some doofus yelling requests for Velvet Undergound numbers like, duh, Sweet Jane.
Cale was kinder, sort of, to his other long-standing cover, Rufus Thomas' Walkin' The Dog. But for the most part the tanned and affable Cale looked back across his nearly two-dozen solo albums in a sort of shuffle mode, picking songs at random switching between keyboards and guitar in front of his young backers, a scarily good trio of guitarist, drummer and bassist.
As he steered away from the obvious, he challenged the audience to embrace his latest work like unreleased numbers like Hey Ray (a hip-hop-influenced askew look back at the 60s) and last year's digital only release Jumbo in Tha Modern World.
That song started off a Cale-on-electric-guitar bracket which proved the night's most satisfying for its taut and very New York rock power.
When he and band went into acoustic mode later, it hit the lowpoint with the worringly Jack Johnson-like Dancing Undercover. But piano ballads Big White Clouds and Chinese Envoy still let Cale's sonorous voice ring.
And his illustrious history was touched upon in I Lost Myself from Songs for Drella the Andy Warhol tribute album he did with Lou Reed. And he later ended the main set with a viola-powered scrape through the VU's Venus In Furs, (its S&M lyrics sounding not quite as naughty as they once did) and encoring with his true art-rock chestnut, Pablo Picasso.
All told, it was baffling but brilliant.
Onetime local avant-rock figurehead Jed Town of Fetus Productions -the band reconstituted three-fifths by some Mint Chicks -opened with a punk hiss and a roar but called it quits early due to a dead amp.
