REVIEW: John Cale & Guests present the Velvet Underground & Nico @ Sound City

Lydia Ransome | 28th May 2017

Crowds gathered at Liverpool’s Clarence Dock on Friday evening for the sold out performance headed by John Cale of Velvet Underground and a host of other artists.

The performance celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Velvet Underground & Nico album, one of the most influential rock albums of all time.

John Cale was joined by Gruff Rhys, Clinic, Nadine Shah, Fat White Family and Wild Beasts as he recreated the 1967 album featuring the iconic banana image.

The set began with black and white images of the band in their prime appearing on the screens either side of the stage as Cale dived straight into the album tracklist in random order.

Unsurprisingly, the atmosphere remained calm throughout as fans listened intently to Cale’s performance. The nature of the album means that fans were never going to be frantically dancing round and pushing into one another as you might expect from crowds at a festival. Rather, serene head nodding along to ‘femme fatale’.

Psychedelic visuals accompanied the soft echo-y tones of the original Velvet Underground sound. Cale injected some charisma into the performance with some dance moves during the more up beat tracks.

Crowds swayed along to tracks such as ‘Sunday Morning’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ as the sun set over Liverpool docks – a wonderfully scenic venue for the anniversary event and one that fans will be sure to remember.

@LydiaRansome