"Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being"
- TRUST
- SPIKE
1977. The punk revolution. A guy who looks like an evil reincarnation
of Buddy Holly, yet calls himself Elvis and sings things like "Everything
means less than zero", bursts into the English music scene. I guess you
get the picture. The formerly named Declan MacManus went to become the most
important individual figure of the New Wave, enjoying considerable commercial
and critical success for three years. Then, his will to experiment with all
the genres he could think of and a painfully slow decline of his extraordinary
songwriting abilities led him to become more or less an obscurity to the general
public, mostly known today for his collaborations with dinosaurs like Paul McCartney
and Burt Bacharach.
To tell you the truth, I don't see why anybody would want to buy any of his
post-1983 works, as they all rather uneven. But don't get me wrong, I admire
him a lot. His lyrics, mostly about politics and frustrated relationships, are
enigmatic, funny and articulate, and his undeniable gift for writing endless
catchy melodies compensates his alarming lack of originality. And yes, his voice
is an acquired taste: it's been said that is the worst in the history of rock
'n' roll, but I find that statement to be very unfair. Personally, Robert Plant
and Joe Strummer irritate much more, and Costello's singing usually fits the
songs just fine. When he tries to croon a melody that is clearly out of his
range or starts barking at the end of a sloppy rocker you'd better run away,
though. Elvis' guitar playing is quite rudimentary, but he is usually backed
by the Attractions (Steve Nieve - keyboards, Bruce Thomas - bass, Pete Thomas
- drums), a taalented ggroup of musicians that make up for that. And he never
gets the girl. Damn, that's why I like him so much.
For once, Rolling Stone got it right. Costello's first album is one of his very best. From the brief opening "Welcome to the Working Week", which manages to merge doo-wop with rock, to the sinister closing single "Watching the Detectives", which manages to merge punk with reggae, it's one cool song after another: ballads ("No Dancing", "Alison"), bluesy, bouncy numbers ("Blame It On Cain", "Sneaky Feelings", "Pay It Back") and rockers ("Mistery Dance"), all of them with a warped fifties sound. But don't worry, since "Red Shoes (The Angels Wanna Wear My)" is a charming homage to the Byrds, with vaguely folkish instrumentation and disarming harmonies, and "I'm Not Angry" is pure punk, you never forget you ain't listening to some Larry Williams LP with awful pressing. Nick Lowe's production makes it all sound as if it was recorded in somebody's garage and Clover's spontaneous performances contrast with the sophistication shown by the Attractions on later albums. Of course, Costello's wit and self-deprecating humor are all over the place, and the lyrics are clever as hell: "Less Than Zero" is an early example of how he combines political and sentimental subjects. It's about a couple that turns the television on so their parents can't hear them, but also about Oswald Mosley, the old leader of the English fascist movement. By the way, did you know that the motto of the SS was "Mein Einen ist Treue"? What a weird coincidence...
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Now that everybody knew who this Costello guy was, it was time for him and the recently formed Attractions to abandon the dated, but funny style of his debut and start sounding as an aggressive New Wave group. And they do. And how. In fact, I miss the irony of My Aim Is True, here there's only hatred. Guess that he is too busy stalking his ex-girlfriend to show a minimun of humanity. Anyway, this album includes three of his most well known songs: "Pump It Up", "Chelsea (I Don't Want To Go To)" and "Radio, Radio". You've probably heard them already, so I won't comment them further. Others are just as good: "No Action" assaults the listener with an outburst of punk energy, "The Beat" is so irresistibly quirky, and "Lipstick Vogue"... well, is simply great. However, I've got lots of complaints: this is Costello at his most resentful, what I don't think is a thing to look foward to, and many of the songs range from the lacklustre ("You Belong To Me", "Hand In Hand") to the not so interesting ("Little Triggers", "Living In Paradise"). Even worse, my beloved Attractions are far from their peak, their playing isn't very tight and Steve Nieve uses some extremely disguting synth tone, especially in "You Belong To Me". This Years Model is an album that fans will want badly, but I find it to be way overrated.
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Actually, I have no problems with Elvis doing something different, but, please, give me some good songs. The story goes like this: after being banned from the radio in America and written off as a racist (an obviously stupid accusation, no matter what he said drunk in a pub), Costello decided to make a tribute to "black music", giving soul and r 'n' b arrangements to some of the songs he had lying around and writing new ones in that vein. That was a sincere, if forced move, and there's a whole lotta songs here. However, since the Attractions are hardly the MG's and for the first time the songwriting is bellow par, this can be counted as his first mediocre album: mediocre playing ("Five Gears In Reverse"), mediocre lyrics ("Possession"), mediocre melodies ("B Movie", "Motel Matches"), mediocre production... "Riot Act" is an epic closer, but the fact that the simple, guitar driven demo included as a bonus is much better should tell you something right away about the conditions in which this album was recorded: it sounds rushed, Elvis sings as if he didn't give a damn and the only thing the Attractions do in order to remedy that is turn the auto-pilot on and play very fast, without any subtlety or interest. That is not to say that there ain't great songs ("King Horse" never stays in the same place, "New Amsterdam" charmingly recalls "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away"), only that they are outnumbered by the likes of "Human Touch" or "Beaten To The Punch". What a mess.
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By the end of the exhausting Get Happy!! Tour, Costello was facing personal problems (and a writer's block) and seriously considered retirement. Thankfully, his will to make music got the best out of him and he decided to carry on. A wise choice, since still had at least two great albums ahead of him. Trust wasn't one of them, though. Elvis was forced to reach for old unused tunes like "New Lace Sleeves" and "Watch You Step" (a carbon copy of "Secondary Modern", by the way), and the recording sessions were again quite enervating. Consequently, this is an enjoyable, if flawed, album. Not that you could tell from the opener "Clubland", to which the Attractions lend a classy, smooth performance (Steve's jazzy piano solo included), but it's obvious that many of the daring experiments within the pop formula appearing here ("Shot With His Own Gun", the jerky "Fish 'n' Chip Paper") would only pay off the next year. On the down side, we get the first taste of the rockabilly filler that would eventually ruin many of his posterior work: "Luxembourg" is not only a sloppy, melody lacking mess, but sounds muddled. Apparently, Costello would later find amusing that people realized it had lyrics after seeing the live shows, because here he seems to be making up nonsense syllables, as in McCartney's "Mumbo" or something. What else? Oh, there are lots of overlooked, modest gems here, really, like the intricate, weird "Lovers Walk" (Bo Diddley would be proud) and "Strict Time" (Bob Marley would be proud). Every single other song is well crafted and done in a different style, and that's that. I can't stand "New Lace Sleeves", though. The uninspired playing and Costello's grating voice make this the most overrated song in his catalog. Unless you count "God Give Me Strength". Oh my, I notice I've fallen into one of the lamest clichés ever to grace music reviewing, mentioning Bo Diddley while describing "Lovers' Walk". What will be next? Saying that "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" ends with a jam resembling Santana?
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This should have been a disaster. Shiny production, a huge horn section, back-up female singers and, to top all that, some of the shallowest songs Declan had ever written ("The Element Within Her", "Love Went Mad"). But not. All those elements only enhance the good vibrations that come out of this album, and the songs mentioned above are incredibly funny, perfect parodies of the pop genre that I cannot help to love in all their err... silliness. I mean, come on, how can you not laugh when you hear those "la, la, la"s? As for the rest, it's pretty much great: some of his best ballads (the sweet and catchy "Everyday I Write The Book", the solemn "Shipbuilding") and lots of numbers that show a great amount of energy ("Let Them Talk", with its clever "Have we come with this fa fa fa to find a soul cliché" lyric, the exuberant "The Greatest Thing", lifted by Pete Thomas' inspired drumming). "Pills And Soap" is a successful experiment, "Mouth Almighty" wins me over with its great chorus and "King Of Thieves" gets an original, kinda medieval arrangement. Plus, the performances are top-notch and Elvis even dares to sustain some long notes - to great effect. He wanted to stay away from the dense sound of Imperial Bedroom, so this a more commercial album, but it's all fun, and while you may hate at first the rowdy horns, they really improve songs like "TKO (Boxing Day)" and "The World And His Wife". Also, we get to hear the definitive version of "Invisible Man" (sketches of that song can be traced back to the Trust era), and it's breathtaking. Keep boxin' clever, man!
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Maybe Goodbye Cruel World was so bad that fans were ready to swallow anything not being another duet with Daryl Hall or maybe two years were just too long a wait but, somehow, King Of America was seen as a return to form from Mr. Costello after his latest, rather embarrassing, flirtations with mainstream. There's no denying this 1986 offering marked a huge turning point in his career: tired of playing the angry young man game, he fired the Attractions, changed his name back to MacMannus and credited the album to "The Costello Show", which is him and the Confederates, a band made up of American session players, including Jerry Scheff and Jim Keltner. Also, King Of America marks, rather appropriately, a long-time, and not too successful if you ask me, collaboration with musicians and producers from the other side of the Atlantic. This time at the control room there's fellow Coward Brother T-Bone Burnett, and the sound could be described as rootsy, even if ! Costello's roots are terribly diluted... let's say then that it showcases his country and rockabilly leanings. Too bad it makes me wish he had never heard any Johnny Cash in his youth: while songs like "Our Little Angel" and "Indoor Fireworks" are good country, and surely better than anything on Almost Blue (no damned choirgirls, that's fer sure), no kind words can be spoken in defence of "Glitter Gulch" and "The Big Light" (remember "Luxembourg"? well, here we are again!) or such bizarre covers as The Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" or J. B. Lenoir's "Eisenhower Blues" (??), that depict Costello as little else than a corny oldies act. The Attractions are only heard on the best cut, "Suit Of Lights", enough to show how soulless the backing in the other tracks is (I specially dislike the booming drums), and you don't know how I miss them. Who knows, perhaps if they all hadn't been so busy throwing instruments at each other's heads, they could have helped Elvis savage the project. But, as it is, it only gets duller with time.
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The Attractions were on the verge of breaking up, and Costello's last album with them for a long time is consistently mediocre. It is supposed to be his angrier and darker set of tunes but ends up being just lame due to the weakness of the material and the clumsiness of the performances (the crude conditions of the studio are said to have something to do with that, but I would rather blame the tensions between the musicians). Most of the attempts at sounding aggressive or harsh fall flat, and Elvis only recaptures his old energy in the two monstrous (monstrous because they're both more than six minutes long and have a doom-laden atmosphere) electric period Dylan homages: "I Want You", the ultimate expression of neglected love and bitterness, set to a repetitive melody and menacing singing, and "Tokio Storm Warning", a nightmarish, stream of consciousness travelogue. Rename it "Tokio Storm Blues" and it would have fitted perfectly on Highway 61 Revisited. The rest is nowhere as memorable, with the nice, if irrelevant pop songs ("I Hope You're Happy Now", "Blue Chair") and the rambling ballads ("Battered Old Bird", "Poor Napoleon") being a far cry from Costello's best. Also, the rave-ups are either abysmal ("Honey Are You Straight Or Are You Blind?") or just plain unexciting ("Uncomplicated", which, built on one chord, really lives up to its title, "Next Time Round"). If I were you, I wouldn't make this my first purchase. Or second, for that matter. Unless you happen to find that rare cassette edition packaged as a box of Cadbury chocolate. In that case, you can send me a copy.
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Three years without recording, and the well has obviously run dry. Spike is an incoherent collection of songs, uncomfortably artsy and commercial at the same. There’s crazy experimentation with styles (swing, torch balladry, industrial funk, soul, lounge, rockabilly) but everything sounds compromised, from the drab production to the mid-tempo dreariness of most of the material. Granted, some of it isn’t too bad: "...This Town...", set apart by an elaborate McCartney bass line and catchy refrain, the depressing "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror", the huge, by Costello’s standards, pop hit "Veronica" (probably the only reason so many people bought the album in first place), the surrealistic "God’s Comic". But sitting through the rest is a true nightmare: the enphasis is clearly not in inspiration, but in craftmanship, and although that’s provided aplenty by the senseless all-star cast (everybody, from Roger McGuinn to Paul McCartney to Chrisie Hyndie shows up here), if, for whatever reason, after all these wanna-be rockers ("Pads, Paws And Claws", featuring Elvis’ infamous barking), brassy, sloppy instrumentals ("Stan Malone"), and silly Irish ballads that drag forever and ever ("Any King’s Shilling") you swear you’d like to hang the guy’s head on your wall, I can sympathise. To some extent. Now let me finish this awful review in an equally awfully pretentious manner, quoting an important Spanish writer (Gómez de la Serna), who once said: "being bored is like kissing Death". Don’t listen to this album, then.
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In the same style that Spike, but a bit better. Actually, now Costello seems to be trying to pay tribute to both the Beach Boys and Frank Zappa, and sometimes gets away with it, but you know that something is wrong when he sings a song intended for Carl Wilson ("All Grown Up", with an insipid string arrangement) or delivers a soporific recitation with unimaginative use of feedback ("Broken", written by his wife) and yet wants you to tolerate his diatribes against poor bassist Bruce Thomas in "How To Be Dumb". Add to this Mitchell Froom's thick production techniques and the result is an unlistenable mess. Unlistenable, although not completely boring, because buried among awful retro rockers like "Playboy To A Man" or slowwwww ballads like "After The Fall" there are some great tracks: "The Other Side Of Summer" is a joyful song about ecological problems and burning Madonna and the gorgeous waltz "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4" must surely be one of his best moments. In the meanwhile, "Harpies Bizarre" and "So Like Candy" are melodic and harmless, but for the most part the sound is so claustrophobic and the lyrics so meaningless, that you really shouldn't mind, it's simply exhausting.
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Nostalgia strikes and Costello, besides titling the album Brutal Youth and filling the CD booklet with photos of his childhood, brings the Attractions back (at least Steve and Pete; Bruce and Nick Lowe fill in alternately the bass parts, while Mitchell Froom produces again, but has very little room to fuck things up) in order to make some joyful noise, just like in the old days. Well, almost: Elvis says he wrote most of these songs in one day, what goes to show how prolific he is, but also that he could have put more care. As you might expect, he opens with a rocker ("Pony Street") and closes with a ballad ("Favourite Hour") and the rest of the album is sliced between decent stuff, harmless or disposable depending on your point of view, and filler. Lots of it. It doesn't make a difference, the crappy up-tempo throwaways (the thumping "20% Amnesia", the braindead "13 Steps Lead Down") and the dreary down-tempo throwaways ("Still Too Soon To Know", that manages to bore despite its short running time, the not so scary "This Is Hell", the Van Morrison tribute "Clown Strike", with lyrics trivial by his standards), get on my nerves all the same. And what's the matter with the playing? The guitars are loud and moderately exciting for the most part (even grungey, I'd say), and Pete bashes and clatters nicely, but, once again, the keyboards are out of place too often and as a whole the band sounds disjointed and thin. And this, coming from the Attractions, is a real letdown. The share of enjoyable rockers prevents me in the long run from throwing it into the waste bin, though, but anyone familiar with his late seventies offerings, that Brutal Youth consciously apes, is bound to be disappointed. Still, I give it a seven as record rating, if only because "Kinder Murder" is unbelievably crunchy and "Just About Glad", "All The Rage" and "London's Brilliant Parade" are guilty pleasures a profane could mistake for ancient outtakes. But, for my money, All This Useless Beauty is much more self-assured and listenable.
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Ever since the late eighties, Costello has been keen on collaborating with veteran rock stars like Paul McCartney or Roger McGuinn and musicians from radically different grounds, like the Brodsky Quartet or, more recently, Anne Sofie von Otter. But few people would have expected this. Yes, Elvis himself has always expressed his admiration for Burt Bacharach (the songwriter of "I Say A Little Prayer For You", among countless easy-listening hits for Dionne Warwick and other artists), and covered one of his songs as early as in 1977, but the notion of him singing torch ballads with a huge orchestral accompaniment seems awkward to say the least. Burt wrote most of the melodies, and Declan handed out the lyrics, almost as cliché-riddled ("I'm not saying there will be violins but don't be surprised if they appear", yeah, right) and while some of the songs are good ("The Sweetest Punch" might be typical cocktail party fodder, but has an interesting melody and arrangement, "Toledo" marries Costello's smooth for once in a while voice with bouncy horn parts, and the roaring crescendo of "I Still Have That Other Girl" is perhaps the only moment of the album that succeeds at being highly emotional), they're mostly ruined by the strained singing, sappy backing vocals and slick to death production. On the other hand, "Tears At The Birthday Party", "My Thief", muzak straight out a cheesy Disney soundtrack (just listen to the coda) and "The Long Division" would have hardly fared better on the hands of a more technically gifted singer, so I won't completely blame Costello's voice for this disaster, even if his falsetto is painful anyway. I give Burt credit for his influence in Elvis' songwriting, recognizable from the beginning, in "Accidents Will Happen", for example, but this ill-fated pairing should have never happened. Of course, clueless critics praised Painted From Memory and it even made Elvis win his first Grammy, but artistically, it's a sell-out of the highest order.
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