20Ten (2010)

20Ten (2010)

And suddenly, before he became The Prince Formerly Known As An Artist: a spark. That it comes on his most unimaginatively titled record, delivered with European newspapers and boasting a cover that looks like the genesis of someone’s C+ Parsons project, is pretty damn amazing. But hey, here’s “Everybody Loves Me,” a twerpy power-pop number with hammy piano turnaround and a chorus like a career coda. And there’s “Beginning Endlessly,” a cosmic pickup the soldiers forth on a vacuumed-out Euro synth hook and the drums from Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Even the more rote numbers get goosed with throwback instrumental treatment, like the glam synths on “Lavaux” or the Chic guitar clip in “Sticky Like Glue.”

But the lingering impression isn’t of a gift to loyalists, or even an idle thumbing through his catalog. It’s of defensiveness. The game is given away on the first track: before issuing a standard lament for the ice caps and a stock plea for unity, he laments all the “electromagnetic pop” on the radio. His solution is a bottle of 1999, mouldering in the back of the fridge. Back in ’96, he could title a song “Jam of the Year,” knowing there was a decent chance he’d be right. 20Ten has “Future Soul Song”; presumably, our interstellar overlords centuries hence will go batshit for fussy production and placeholder “sha la la”s. If you’re up for a goof, point your CD player to track 77, “Laydown,” where our man drops a rippity rapp containing the phrase “the purple Yoda.”