***1/2 John Cale

WALKING ON LOCUSTS

(Ryko)

It's not just that this is John Cale's first album of pop songs in more than a decade, it's that he's never done an album that sounded quite this . . . poppy. Poppy and, at times, positively perky with arrangements as scrupulously scrubbed as something one might find on a Bonnie Raitt album -- lots of "tasty" guitar, archly superfluous back-up singers, deep-dish rhythm homages (Cajun, worldbeat, rock). There are petite-avant touches -- a brief string quartet freakout on "Dancing Undercover," the bizarre interstellar coda of "Tell Me Why" -- but overall the music glows with robust health and good intentions.

Counterbalancing all this is Cale's dour singing and his often ambiguous but none-too-rosy lyrics. When not determinedly arcane (as on the David Byrne co-penned "Crazy Egypt"), he limns a world view summed up in a line from "Indistinct Notion of Cool": "If we work it out/We'd have it done by now." It's not bleak, just resigned and honest and occasionally droll: "Thanks for thinking of me/And thanks for the flowers/Deadly nightshade is beautiful/I could stare at them for hours," he deadpans on "Dancing" over the most blithe pop/Cajun background you could ask for. Cale's albums have been more challenging in the past, but rarely this entertaining.

-- Richard C. Walls

(John Cale plays the Paradise this Tuesday, October 1, with openers Red House Painters. Call 562-8804.)