Review of When I Was Cruel
Inpress (Australia), 2002-05-01
- Jayson Argall

 

ELVIS COSTELLO WHEN I WAS CRUEL

Def Jam

The (every) artists' artist has returned with a new offering, and having recently produced albums with the likes of velour crooner Burt Bacharach and mezzo soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, as well as working on more scores than a Smith St junkie, Costello has put down the eclectic and picked up the electric. However that is not to suggest that When I Was Cruel is a linear lined dabble at 4/4 rock (it is EIViS Costello after all), however it does suggest a return to his earlier punk/beat leanings, scathing commentary, and vein inflated passion, and it certainly procures, for the most part, a bloody good album.

Title sake When I Was Cruel No.2 is a brooding bossa-nova bite where Costello is the entertaining fly on a weddings wall, as guests draw their lines in the confetti. "Not quite aside, they snide `She's number four/There's number three by the door'." He proceeds to subvert ABBA's Dancing Queen during the drunken dance humiliation. 15 Petals certainly had the temples teetering as he bellows his way fronting a big band blast, as does the acidic faux-ballad Tart, while Alibi is up with the best he has ever done.

Costello seems proud in listing the instruments he plays on each track, and why wouldn't you when the list reads "Magnatone Typhoon, Silvertone, Rickenbacker, Fender Telecaster, 1914 Gibson arch-top and Gibson 160e", and that's just some of the electric guitars listed, let alone Rhodes pianos and the like. It all seems to indicate that Costello really wanted to do this album. A full 15 tracks with raw production buffed and spit polished. It sounds good already and is sounding better with every listen. However, whether it stacks up to his early classics, I guess we'll just have to wait 20 years.

- Jayson Argall