Review of When I Was Cruel
Age - Green Guide, 2002-05-02
- Shaun Carney

 

POP
When I Was Cruel
Elvis Costello (Island)
****

Eight years on from his last solo album and after a series of collaborations with the likes of Bill Frisell and Burt Bacharach, it's gratifying to learn that Elvis Costello can still operate at optimum levels. Alibi, a caustic meditation on the role of therapy in modem society on his new album, When I Was Cruel, is as good as anything he's done. It's classic Costello: a melody that takes four or five unexpected turns delivered by a voice like cobra venom. It's also far and away the best thing here, which finds Costello in "rock" mode. For two-thirds of the 15 tracks, he travels very well. The title cut, a monologue delivered over some mid-'90s Portishead-style beats, is a highlight. My Little Blue Window is a chunk of rousing pop that seems to be a companion for his 1985 composition, Blue Chair. It's only when the tempo picks up that Costello sounds lacking in inspiration: Episode of Blonde, Daddy Can I Turn This? and Dissolve are probably the hardest-rocking songs he's done since Get Happy!! in 1980, but they come off as noisy rather than incisive. All the same, rising 48, Costello still carries a flame. Shaun Carney