Songfacts®:

• "Company Commander" is a discordant, frantic whirlwind of a song where John Cale paints an unsettling image of right-wingers setting their libraries ablaze. The mental picture alone is enough to make a book lover shudder. When Uncut magazine asked him about it, Cale didn't hold back:
  
  "People are just reckless," he said. "It's disgraceful. We failed our children, you know? We've dropped the ball. Trying to keep track of what's happening on the political scene, you've got your hands full there. It's just a mess."
• So who's the titular company commander? Cale describes him as a kind of mashup of all sorts of hardened figures - "like French special forces officers... 'freedom in their darkness.'" It's a character who thrives in the chaos, finding comfort in never giving up the fight."
  
  "My favorite word in that song is constable," Cale mused to Uncut, clearly amused by the anachronistic flair. "Such a weird one to have in there. I mean, what's the time period, here?" Good question - if anyone figures it out, let us know.
• Cale recorded "Company Commander" for his 18th solo album, Poptical Illusion. The album was born out of the pandemic, a feverish period when Cale churned out a staggering number of songs. The lockdown had left Cale simmering with anger.
  
  "The lockdown sort of dictated what was going on, so my anger showed up fairly regularly," he admitted to The Guardian. "Political stuff, mainly."
• Musically, "Company Commander" begins with Cale delivering his lyrics in a tone that one critic cheekily compared to a "high-ranking Dalek." Then, as if the whole thing couldn't get any stranger, it explodes into a whirlwind of bubbling techno, which lurches and spins with aggressive abandon.
  
  Cale said it's his favorite track on the album. "Just the noise, the noise of the track itself," he said. "Once I figured out how to do the sound on that song, it's made a difference."