Since their beginnings as the musical disruptors in The Velvet Underground and Roxy Music respectfully, John Cale and Brian Eno trod similar career paths both pushing at music’s extremities while also creating their own uniquely skewed takes on pop. Have worked together on numerous occasions over the years, it wasn’t until 1990 that the pair took the plunge on a full collaborative project and the result is up there with the best records either have been involved with. Eno’s first album of ‘proper’ songs in over a decade, Wrong Way Up is a multilayered, rich, endlessly inventive cycle full of euphoric melodies and textures, with the sublime “Spinning Away” one of many highlights. On this evidence, one wonders what took them so long.

One thing about our Eno, the one who is Mr. Ambient, is that his main skill as a collaborator and a producer is getting people to be very un-ambient and cut to the chase. This is a low-key classic, twelve songs (one of them instrumental) thick and rich with melody and some goofball MIDI programming and crappy drum sounds. Cale’s sad Welsh dog and Eno’s well-intentioned choirboy make a great pair.

Listening to “Empty Frame,” a doo-wop homage with honking saxophones and all, from Brian Eno and John Cale’s collaboration Wrong Way Up, is a dizzying experience. As is hearing the whole album. Two titans of art rock and ambient making the most straightforward pop in their careers could have been a shotgun wedding-style label obligation. Instead it’s a summer road trip soundtracked by your weird art school friends’ interpretations of Top 40 sounds. “Spinning Away” and “In The Backroom” stretch the limits of what can be done with one-to-four chords and the truth, and the sunny swagger of “Been There, Done That” could possibly get your square friends into Music For Airports down the road. You never know.