COMMENTARY : Palmer’s Artistic Integrity Intact : Rock: Critics are wrong in dismissing newfound fame of British soulster who appears in El Cajon tonight.

The contrast between the virtual anonymity he suffered for years while doing multifaceted, yeoman work, and the recent success he has had with beefed-up, slicked-down funk-rock, might lead one to conclude that Robert Palmer opted for the same path of least resistance trod by such current sellouts as Steve Winwood and Peter Gabriel.

T’ain’t so.

The 42-year-old British soulster, who performs tonight at Theatre East in El Cajon, aligns with those artists in the sense that he toiled for years on the outskirts of success, plying a handyman’s toolbox of styles--from hard rock to R&B;, from Latin grooves to Afro-pop, from ballads to reggae. But where Winwood and Gabriel traded in their artistic credentials (and their cognoscenti appeal) for the Cadillac coffin of Top 40 Grammy fame, Palmer merely availed himself of advanced music technology and video savvy to turn up the heat on the more accessible of the sounds he had been hawking for 15 years.

With the mid-’80s ascendance of dance-rock--which was and is little more than cosmetically altered, artificially hip-ified, disco--worthy artists faced a new take on an old pop challenge: to make danceable music that isn’t stupid. Palmer’s great sin is that he mastered that trick without a fatal sacrifice of cool.

In fact, in the tongue-in-cheek videos for his breakthrough 1985 hit, “Addicted to Love,” and such subsequent smashes as “Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” and “Simply Irresistible,” (with that silly gaggle of look-alike models grooving in place behind him), the GQ-garbed singer actually created a new pop image: the investment banker as cosmopolitan funkmaster. Upscale cool, if you will.

Critics, who have never been in Palmer’s corner--he is a musical dilettante, he’s just a cover-boy with a voice, etc.--maintain a frosty disallowance of his skills. But his recordings add weight to his fans’ side of the debate: Palmer owns a distinctive, grainy voice that lends itself well to a variety of moods. The most recent record is last year’s “Don’t Explain,” whose very diversity belies the notion that Palmer is a carpetbagger interested only in gaining a foothold on the charts.

We have arrived at a juncture in pop music where variability is suspect, when widely read critics can’t seem to differentiate between versatility and pointless fragmentation. Palmer’s sartorial spiffiness and comparatively tempered vocal delivery--he doesn’t invest drama or emotion more in one style than in another, and thus doesn’t tip his hand as to instinctive proclivity--has been singled out as proof of a detached, processed approach. But that’s reading the label without sampling the goods.

“Don’t Explain” is the work of a performer who refuses to stay in a rut, especially one of his own device. For example, the album’s first single, “You’re Amazing,” initially sounds like a clone of Palmer’s previous hits--a treadmill of marauding guitar riffs above a slam-bam snare drum track. But the song’s careening arrangement and Palmer’s multitracked vocal exercises preclude the sing-along facileness of those other tunes.

Elsewhere, Palmer demonstrates that his knack for negotiating an accord among several disparate styles remains keen. Anyone who can follow a hard rock workout with tracks as contrary as the brittle, Prince-ly pop-funk of “Mess Around,” the jaunty, candy-colored, Earth, Wind and Fire-meets-Al Jarreau strut, “Happiness,” the neo-Soweto, Ladysmith-like swagger of “History,” and a reggae adaptation of Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight,” is, if anything, defiant of mass-marketing.

Because he doesn’t indulge in the larger-than-life posturing that seems to impress critics, Palmer probably will remain well out of range of the slobbering accolades that can make bona fide superstars of pop craftsmen. But, if keeping his distance from such corruption ensures that Palmer will continue to turn out efforts as enjoyable as “Don’t Explain,” it’s a worthwhile trade-off.