Newpaper article for impending John Cale show on 03/16/90, (with Bob Neuwirth), Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, Brooklyn Heights, New York, NY - "Last Day On Earth"

New York Times

By JON PARELES
Published: March 24, 1990

John Cale and Bob Neuwirth envisioned a cracker-barrel apocalypse in ''The Last Day on Earth,'' a set of songs they wrote together and presented on March 16 at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights. It was a kind of song cycle; the selections were played virtually without interruption, and a recurring theme appeared at the beginning, middle and end.

John Cale and Bob Neuwirth envisioned a cracker-barrel apocalypse in ''The Last Day on Earth,'' a set of songs they wrote together and presented on March 16 at the Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights. It was a kind of song cycle; the selections were played virtually without interruption, and a recurring theme appeared at the beginning, middle and end. By turns folksy and surreal, bleak and wry, the songs added up to a shrug of the shoulders in the face of impending doom.

Both songwriters have been active since the 1960's: Mr. Cale with the Velvet Underground and as the leader of his own groups, Mr. Neuwirth on the Greenwich Village folk circuit and with Bob Dylan's late-1970's Rolling Thunder Revue. They have disparate roots; Mr. Cale is steeped in classical music and Minimalism, while Mr. Neuwirth leans toward rural Americana. But the combination, cemented by Gerry Hemingway's thoughtful percussion, teetered amiably between Mr. Neuwirth's down-home directness and Mr. Cale's somber ruminations.

''The Last Day on Earth'' didn't try to tell a story. It juxtaposed state-of-the-planet commentary with vignettes about lost, dislocated and disconnected characters. The more memorable songs were those in which Mr. Cale seemed to have the upper hand. From his keyboards, he doled out quasi-orchestral chords, jazzy vamps, and in one song a pulsing pattern akin to Philip Glass. Mr. Neuwirth topped them with finger-picked arpeggios on guitar or banjo. The lyrics Mr. Cale sang were atmospheric and elusive - innocent travelers ''trapped by the same rate of exchange'' - while Mr. Neuwirth was more straightforward, singing that the ''sky is full of dirty air'' or itemizing the habitues of an Upper West Side cafe.

Except where its lyrics descended to cliches, ''The Last Day on Earth'' lived up to its modest ambitions. Instead of breast-beating or simply wisecracking, it found an emotional territory somewhere between fatalism and denial - still uneasy but not quite resigned.