John Cale “Paris 1919” (1973) <i> Reprise</i>

One of the great benefits of the compact disc revolution is that hundreds of underappreciated--indeed, previously deleted--albums have been given new life. Among them: John Cale’s “Paris 1919,” an inspired, sometimes elegant work, arguably the iconoclastic Welshman’s most accessible effort. Some of the melodies here are so rich and enticing that it’s hard to understand why this album didn’t make more of a commercial dent when it was released more than 20 years ago. The opening “Child’s Christmas in Wales,” for instance, is an instantly inviting dose of upbeat pop laced with a tad of bluesy rock ‘n’ roll courtesy of some members of Little Feat. Still, there is a striking complexity to much of the material here. The elegiac “Endless Plain of Fortune” is flavored by artfully arranged strings, horns and percussion, and the exotic, hypnotically moody title track has a similar classical-pop coloration (a founding member of the Velvet Underground, Cale is a classically trained musician). Lyrically, “Paris 1919” also is far more sophisticated than the average pop album; Cale tells poetic, occasionally cryptic tales (talk about literary: two of the tracks are called “Macbeth” and “Graham Greene”). Yet rather than sounding stuffy, Cale’s words tend to interlock naturally with his compellingly melancholy (if technically limited) baritone.