Perhaps Cope’s most unfairly reviled album, Interpreter has not even been heard by many Cope fans, though this is partly due to distribution problems at the time of its release.

Listeners who had found 20 Mothers dissapointingly lightweight after the dark sign-of-the-times trilogy of Peggy Suicide, Jehovahkill, and Autogeddon found an easy target for their hostility in Interpreter, which not only gave Cope’s fanciful side even more free rein than 20 Mothers, but also represented his most deliberate attempt at a mainstream crossover since Saint Julian (or rather, his most deliberate and focused; My Nation Underground was even more mainstream but a confused mess.) Interpreter — on which, like 20 Mothers, Thighpaulsandra was Cope’s main creative collaborator — had a big, widescreen sound, and a mere dozen songs, most of which were melodic and tightly constructed.

Personally, I think these changes were all positive. I find Saint Julian an underrated album, and 20 Mothers an enchanting, if patchy, tapestry of sounds. And it puzzles me why people would have expected Cope to continue to work in a doomsayer vein after following up the masterpieces of Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill with the stumbling self-parody of Autogeddon.

Cope the master tunesmith is all over the place on Interpreter: the sprightly glam of single I Come From Another Planet, Baby; the exquisite melody of Arthur Drugstore; the attitude-laden garage rock of Cheap New Age Fix; the Krautrock-meets-the-theme-from-the-60s-Star-Trek-show S.P.A.C.E.R.O.C.K. With Me; the deceptively jaunty Maid of Constant Sorrow; the breathtaking symphonic synths of Dust (Thipe really shines on that last one.) 

Not everything on the album works. Planetary Sit-In, the album’s other single, falls short in the lyric department (Cope’s Utopian hippy side upsetting the balance with his sarcastic cynic side) and the oversweetened arrangement almost recalls My Nation Underground. The Battle for the Trees, by contrast, could be an outtake from the doomsday trilogy: too long and unfocused to sell its bleak message. Re-Directed Male proves once again that Cope should stick to writing in praise of funk, not trying to be funky. The Loveboat, which this album’s detractors point to a lot, recalls the lesser moments from 20 Mothers, but it’s so obviously meant as a frivolity, with the “alien-talk,” the whistling, and the bad rapping (I think he was very aware of how bad his rapping was,) that it seems unfair to be harsh on it.

Interpreter deserves better than its status as one of Cope’s biggest missteps. I sometimes wonder if its negative reception had as much to do with Cope’s retreat from the mainstream as the onset of middle age. On the other hand, Cope’s old rival, Ian McCulloch, had a mainstream success one year after Interpreter, with Echo and the Bunnymen’s Evergreen, and what did that bring him? Embarassing showbiz moments, a horrible MOR follow-up, and a return to obscurity. So perhaps, in the end, Interpreter has fulfilled its destiny after all, as a cult album within the cult of Julian Cope, one glorious final moment of accessibility from an artist who so often managed that delicate balance between utter weirdness and disarming tunefulness.