Cale embraces the winter chill

‘Mercy,’ filled with new collaborators and honoring old ones, extends his influence.

Here are two widely known facts about John Cale: He was a founding member of the Velvet Underground, and infused the group with its astringent avant-garde sensibility; and he once decapitated a chicken onstage and chucked it at the audience, causing some of his band members to quit.

“It was the most effective show-stopper I ever came up with,” he wrote unrepentantly in his 1999 memoir, “What’s Welsh for Zen.”

Cale’s place in music history includes not only the first two Velvet Underground albums, but also his production work on influential debut albums by the Modern Lovers, the Patti Smith Group and the Stooges, and a string of solo albums that mix excoriating tales of violence like “Gun,” “Dead or Alive” and “Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend” with stately and unsettled ballads, including “You Know More Than I Know,” “Buffalo Ballet” and “I Keep a Close Watch.”

On “Mercy,” Cale’s first album of new songs since 2012, he brought in collaborators for more than half of the songs, including electropop duo Sylvan Esso and

Marlene Marino AT 80, John Cale is looking back at creative partners like David Bowie and Nico while pushing forward.