GRAHAM WEIGHS IN : Parker Faces Middle Age With Poetic ‘Episodes’ of Passions and Intelligence

Downsizing is the buzzword for business in the lean, mean 1990s, and, for the average working stiff, there are few words more terrifying.

Downsizing has even caught up with Graham Parker, a rock ‘n’ roll working stiff whose productivity (18 albums and EPs in the 19 years since his 1976 debut) and artistic quality have been way above average.

After making records for an assortment of major labels--and having outspoken tiffs with all of them concerning their inability to translate that Parker quality into mass-appeal sales quantity--he finds himself, at 45, downsized into a recording deal with a tiny label, the reissues-oriented, New York City-based Razor & Tie.

“12 Haunted Episodes” is Parker’s first album of new material since “Burning Questions,” the 1992 Capitol release that was his last major-label fling. It finds him facing new market realities with a gracefulness and resilience befitting one of the most thoughtful and grown-up artists in rock ‘n’ roll. (Parker hasn’t gone so downsized, however, that he can’t afford to hire a band. After playing solo on two of his past three U.S. tours, he’s back with a piano-bass-drums backup unit dubbed The Episodes.)

“12 Haunted Episodes” is a gentle, frequently poetic album that pointedly avoids the irate, spitfire side of Parker’s artistry that got him tagged early on as one of the angry young men of the mid-’70s British new wave movement. Rebellious during an era that emphasized polish and technique, the crusty-voiced yet soulful Parker, together with such like-minded figures as Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds, emphasized a rough, roots-influenced rock ‘n’ roll spirit and set the stage for the emergence of punk.

Parker’s new album only occasionally presents the catchy hooks and pure-pop craftsmanship that have been part of his allure. Driven more by lyrics and a warm, intimate feel than by melodies, it works as the eloquent diary of an intelligent and impassioned man taking stock of his life and times as he hits middle age. Tossing in direct lyrical and musical quotations from Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, Parker pays homage to his influences while placing himself in a line of rock poets to which he surely belongs.

Although not as strong as such wonderful late-period Parker albums as “The Mona Lisa’s Sister” (1988) or “Struck by Lightning” (1991), “12 Haunted Episodes” is nevertheless a keeper. (For interested newcomers, the obvious point of entry into Parker’s extensive oeuvre is the double-disc Rhino Records anthology, “Passion Is No Ordinary Word.”)

At its core, “12 Haunted Episodes” is an album about what Parker values. Sustained, long-haul romantic love is paramount; in “Next Phase,” this downsized careerist extols emotional riches above worldly achievements: “When I work, you know it’s just my job / Something that I do to pass the time / Before the next phase of our love.”

But Parker is no slacker; the very next song, “Honest Work,” is a delightful country-Cajun ditty that not only declares his determination to give full value in his labors, but also finds in “honest work” a moral foundation for building a livable world. “Disney’s America” rejects rampant commercialism as a value and endorses a sense of grounded traditionalism; in it, Parker mounts a saddened protest against the mass-market mind - set he sees crowding out intimacy and authenticity across the modern landscape.

With “Pollinate,” an exuberant song about the joys and generative implications of sex, and “Fly,” a mourner’s comforting meditation on death as a release from life’s sorrows, Parker shows as mature and expansive a vision of pop’s possibilities as any songwriter going.

* Who: Graham Parker and The Episodes.

* When: Saturday, April 22, at 8 p.m. With Nico and the Garbagemen.

* Where: Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano.

* Whereabouts: Take Interstate 5 to the San Juan Creek Road exit and turn left onto Camino Capistrano. The Coach House is on the right in the Esplanade Plaza.

* Wherewithal: $18.50.

* Where to call: (714) 496-8930.

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