John Cale ‎– Helen Of Troy VG+/VG

Helen of Troy is John Cale at his most volatile and unfiltered, a record that feels like it’s constantly shifting between elegance and eruption. The songs move with a jagged, impulsive energy—guitars slashing in at odd angles, rhythms lurching forward with deliberate instability, and Cale’s voice veering from icy detachment to sudden, emotional flare‑ups. There’s a sense of creative pressure behind the whole album, as if ideas are spilling out faster than they can be contained, giving even the quieter moments a nervous charge. Yet amid the chaos, Cale’s melodic instincts remain razor‑sharp: hooks appear unexpectedly, harmonies twist in strange but satisfying ways, and the arrangements carry a theatrical tension that keeps everything taut. It’s one of his most compellingly uneven works, a portrait of an artist pushing himself to the edge and finding something fierce, witty, and unmistakably his.