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There's a whole crowd who can draw from Elvis Costello's 12-year survey of romance like it's a dictionary of quotes; he's put out reams of acrimonious sentiment, enough to animate the poison-pen letters of any love life. But bitter lovers will have to turn elsewhere for acerbic puns, since, with Spike, Costello has largely left their ranks to investigate, with more sensitivity and skill than ever before, different territory. Perhaps it's knowing that he may very well be discomfiting some segment of his audience that Costello offers, on the album cover, his own fatuously grinning head mounted on a plaque that bears the inscription "The Beloved Entertainer," as if to beat to the punch those who will consign him to obsolescence.
We no longer have an angry young man eloquently ranting in front of a bare-bones backup band, pumping out top-of-the-form pop tunes easy to bang out on your roommate's guitar. On Spike, glockenspiel, Uileann pipes, tympani, Irish harp, and snazzy horn arrangements create complex, evocative back-drops for Costello's observations about capital punishment, imperialism, and the dark side of organized religion.
Of course, Costello has issued social commentary before, but what he delivers here is consistently concerned with this dark underbelly, and he undresses it with unblinking candor. It's all drawn from a fresh palette of stark settings — an airport departure lounge, a middle-class den bathed in TV light, death row — peopled by a set of characters whose actions reveal more about themselves than they ever proclaim. There's a hapless fellow hanged for inciting a murder, a lecherous and drunken priest who frets about the afterlife, a crafty politician capitalizing on sentimental photo opportunities, easily programmable soldiers, and a voodoo mistress in the guise of a schoolmarm. They all drift around in various states of delusion, rushing away from truth to whatever tune Costello sets down.
From an eerie waltz to frenetic jazz stomps, Costello directs several dozen musicians on Spike, including Paul McCartney on bass, Chrissie Hynde on vocals, and co-producer T Bone Burnett on guitars. McCartney and Costello add each other to short lists of collaborators on two songs, "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws," which clearly show the sappy pop influence of the former overshadowed by the sobering cast of the latter.
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