Sounds of Sin

It’s been six years since Joe Jackson has recorded anything remotely resembling a conventional pop song. But while the Englishman has successfully tackled everything from skinny-tie new wave to jump blues to urbane lounge jazz, he’s always done it in the context of a pop career--until now.

With his latest project, Jackson claims, he has shed his popster’s persona for good, to devote himself to music that bridges classical and rock.

“Heaven and Hell” is a meditation on the seven deadly sins that audaciously combines orchestral textures with electronic minimalism, sweeping, Wagnerian grandeur and full-blown, guitar-fueled rock. It’s his first album for the Sony Classical label, and is a long way from “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” and “Steppin’ Out,” Jackson’s two most recognizable radio hits.

“I was looking for a theme to provide me with a musical structure, and at some point I happened on the seven deadly sins,” says Jackson, who will be performing “Heaven and Hell” at the El Rey Theatre on Sunday and Monday. “At first I was intimidated--how can you compete with Dante, after all?--but as I began researching it, I began to form my own point of view on it. Besides, I’ve had 40 years of experience as a sinner.”

“Heaven and Hell’s” thematic structure unfolds like a musical; the sins follow a narrative arc that progresses from the simply nasty to the truly venal, and are brought to life by a cast of singers that includes singer-songwriters Suzanne Vega and Jane Siberry and acclaimed soprano Dawn Upshaw.

“I think we have this capacity for sin within ourselves, and that’s what intrigued me about the theme,” Jackson says. “I began to think of sin in a homeopathic way--if you lack self-confidence, you need a dose of pride, but if you have too much pride, it can kill you. Everything needs to be in balance, or you’re in trouble.”

It was the cardinal sin of creative sloth that led Jackson to retreat from the pop arena in 1991. “I had really hit the wall with my album ‘Laughter and Lust,’ ” he says. “I felt that I had become just another decent pop singer-songwriter that really wasn’t much use to anyone anymore. My heart just wasn’t in pop music anymore, and it scared the [expletive] out of me. I realized that I wasn’t going to be of much use to anyone unless I tried to get back to why I got into music to begin with.”

To that end, Jackson bailed out of his recording contract with Virgin Records and took a two-year hiatus from the music business. He returned to classical composition, a discipline he’d studied as a teen at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of Music.

“By focusing on composing again, I found that I was really getting back to the pure joy of playing music, which is something I haven’t felt since I was 15,” Jackson says. “I’m actually closer to that feeling now than I was when I was 25 and 35, ‘cause the whole idea of being a pop star is a joke to me now.”

Jackson is quick to add, however, that he has no regrets about any of the unorthodox maneuvers he’s made over his prolific 20-year career, from the petulant pogo-pop of his 1979 debut album, “Look Sharp!,” to high-flown instrumental excursions such as 1987’s “Will Power” and his current work.

“People make very bizarre leaps and assume that I hate my old records, and that I hate them for liking my old records, when all I’m trying to do is find my own path,” Jackson says. “It took a lot of guts to summon the courage to go my own way, regardless of the fact that people weren’t gonna get it right off. But who knows? We’ve seen hits from Gregorian monks chanting, and Henryk Gorecki’s Third Symphony was a best-selling record, so there is a chance that I may have another hit record someday.”

BE THERE

Joe Jackson, Sunday and Monday at the El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd. Sunday sold out, Monday $22.50. (213) 936-4790.