John Cale HOBOSAPIENS (Or Music)

Follow the course of John Cale’s genre-defying solo career, which is now well into its fourth post–Velvet Underground decade, and you’ll find an abundance of both magisterial turns and self-indulgent detours. You can pretty much say the same thing about HoboSapiens, Cale’s first album of pop songs in eight years. Actually, calling them "pop" isn’t quite right: though the high-tech production here sometimes conjures the glossy idiosyncrasies of current chart masters like the Neptunes and Timbaland, it’s in the service of material that won’t be winning over the hedonistic-teen market any time soon. Case in point: "Magritte," which finds Cale musing on the legacy of the Belgian Surrealist painter over a hodge-podge of blues, reggae, and viola-infused art rock.

Of course, It wouldn’t be a John Cale album without some puzzling moments. Why, for example, does the jaunty, countrified "Things" reappear toward the end, jaggedly (and unappealingly) deconstructed? Still, the dramatic ambiance of "Twilight Zone" and the tuneful vigor of "Reading My Mind," a cheery number about traffic accidents (I think — as usual, Cale’s lyrics are both evocative and inscrutable), more than compensate. And his dour Welsh bray shows no signs of dimming with age.