Over the years, Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon has recorded plenty of music that’s never left his side. Protest Songs was initially recorded as the follow-up to the group’s breakthrough album Steve McQueen a.k.a. Two Wheels Good. But considering its sound is rooted in a similar purring electronic groove, it was passed over for the more adventurous From Langley Park to Memphis. Someone had a change of heart and issued the album in 1989 in the U.K. McAloon’s craft is unquestionable as the tight, quirky backbeats lead one to ruminations on life (the don’t-be-bitter plea of “Life of Surprises”), reluctant death (“Pearly Gates,” with its brilliant tagline: “I’ll say ‘after you’ and you’ll say ‘I don’t mind the wait’”) and British royalty (the chunky clunk of “Diana”). His lyrics are becoming less opaque. One hears the anecdotal humor in the somber strains of “Dublin,” the forbidden yearning in “Wicked Things,” and the social-class doom in the jaunty pulse of “Tiffanys.”