Produced entirely by UK disciple Adrian Sherwood, Rainford is being marketed as spiritual kin to Johnny Cash’s American sessions. Not untrue, but where Cash/Rubin deployed the artifice of stark, timeless clarity to sum up a career and prepare for death, Perry/Sherwood are musically and thematically forward-looking. Though he’s nearing the end of his time on this planet, Perry doesn’t sound preoccupied with death or the world’s slings and arrows any more than he ever has, which is to say, while his righteous anger at Babylon remains intact, his delivery isn’t prophetic so much as shamanic, gnomic, and as a result, distant.  

Thanks to Sherwood’s production, all nine songs on Rainford are engaging on the macro level; you won’t have to work hard to enjoy them, and you’ll remember how they go later, and the micro; they are, in the classic dub tradition, rich with bizarre surprises. However, Sherwood’s real coup is finding and highlighting the melodies in Perry’s mystic babbling, making it easier for us Babylonians to take him seriously. Your mileage with shamanic rants and mid-tempo dub rhythms may vary, but it’s impressive how much melody Sherwood is able to draw out of both.  

Perry’s personal and political impact are often blunted by his idiosyncrasies, but Rainford’s best moments are so melodically engaging that regular old human emotions find their way in after all. Some highlights: the bright, uplifting fight song “Run Evil Spirit,” the colossally heavy “African Starship,” which is all the more affecting because its description of Afro-futurist liberation sounds like a very stoned daydream and the apocalyptic, cello-driven “Let It Rain,” the prophetic power of which will likely augment in the hot, dry years to come. (On the other hand, I have no idea what “Cricket on the Moon” is about, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun if you don’t mind a little gargling.)  

And then there’s the finale, the mostly true “Autobiography of the Upsetter,” a moment of surprising (if relative) emotional clarity from the oft otherworldly Perry. It’s hard not to get a bit misty when, after Perry describes his childhood in Jamaica, his work with Bob Marley, and, why not, his mandate to wipe out evilness and racism, the chorus, a defiant cry of “I am The Upsetter,” is lifted heavenward by warm vocal harmonies.  

“Autobiography of the Upsetter” sure sounds like a last word, but knowing Perry, it isn’t. He’s too prolific and allergic to linear narrative. For the rest of us, “Autobiography of the Upsetter,” and Rainford as a whole, will do just fine as a capstone to an important, if inscrutable, catalog.