“Like you’ve put your head in a jet engine”: The 2003 album John Cale thought embodied punk
“Punk is an in-your-face, anarchistic musical approach to social commentary,” John Cale wrote in 2010.
Since then, the quotation has been passed around sociopolitical and theoretical discourse in an effort to eloquently thematise what exactly anti-establishment posturing is: Is punk a movement, a style, a characteristic, or a mixture of all three?
If anyone knows a thing or two about living and breathing punk, it’s Cale…the legendary Welsh musician is most widely known as the co-founder of art-rock band The Velvet Underground, revolutionising their hypnotic sonic blanket with avant-garde drone techniques, electric viola, and feedback.
But Cale didn’t utter the expansive, evocative statement in a heavy-set discussion on musical aesthetics, nor did he in a well-thought-over essay – rather, Cale was describing an all-but-forgotten band, whose grisly, scabrous sound was light-years ahead of the early 2000s crowd just about ready for an inflexion of punk in their sugary pop Cheerios.
Writing for Uncut in 2017, Cale shared nine pieces of music “worthy of a new society”. Sure enough, the young Oregon band Yellow Swans and their record Dreamed were sandwiched into a list containing household names, like Clipse, The Beach Boys, and Frank Zappa.
Cale wrote, “They were a young Oregon band who split a couple of years back. They did morphing white noise and feedback, very aggressive. Suicide did something similar using beats and pulses – that stuff can be hallucinogenic.”
“Punk is an in-your-face, anarchistic musical approach to social commentary. The Yellow Swans’ sound grates on your nerves – like you’ve put your head in a jet engine. That’s punk.”
John Cale on Dreamed by Yellow Swans
In Yellow Swans’ own words, the album is only a “prediction” of some of the things that would come later in their discography before their 2008 record, including “shoegaze guitars and slipping tape and washed out expressionist electronics”.
But if this record was punk, it was punk way beyond its years. Today, we might be able to track its influence on more mainstream anti-establishment projects, such as the abrasive pitchiness in Water From Your Eyes, or the raw, confident post-industrial sounds of New York electronic post-punkers YHWH Nailgun’s 45 Pounds.
Over two decades later, with pop stars being forced to hold phone-free concerts in a bid to connect with their fans, and with household names leaning on AI techniques to prop up their songwriting, Yellow Swans’ punk offering seemed to be fighting a battle it didn’t even know to prepare for.
Perhaps heeding the call that the industry needs shuddering experimental music like this to eat it from the inside, the duo reunited in 2023 after over a decade of inactivity. They returned with a series of tapes documenting their improvisational live sets, with an offering as recent as 2026’s Out Of Pracie III.
Though I haven’t managed to get my hands on the in-demand tapes, the critical consensus seems to suggest that the band haven’t lost their punk edge one bit on their new releases. Thanks for the recommendation, Cale, who has all but pointed us to a sign that reads: Punk never dies.
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