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Sporting huge, horn-rimmed glasses, a rumpled 1950's business suit, white socks and penny loafers, Elvis Costello, by all logic, should not be a 1970's rock star. In this age of slick, synthesized long-haired rock, or laid-back California pop, Costello, Buddy Holly comparisons aside, is the nearest living thing to a National Lampoon nerd poster. Ah, but give him his huge Hammond guitar, and limpid-looking Costello becomes one of the most threatening, comic, sardonic, and even classic rock singers ever set loose on society. The 23-year-old Britisher has violated most every musical tenet laid down in the 70's, but is slowly, like a good sci-fi creature, becoming unstoppable.
Armed Forces, Costello's third album, is no less brash or daring than My Aim is True or This Year's Model, both of which were given widespread, if reluctant, critical approval. In Armed Forces, Costello proves that gruff, punk lyrics aren't so bad when they accompany real wit and irony, not forsaking, of course, bobbly little tunes that you oft find yourself humming.
The trick in listening to Costello is remembering that he takes little seriously, least of all himself or his music, and therefore, when he sings about gruesome domestic crimes or the screwing-up of pre-pubescent love affairs, he's only having a little fun — something he deserves, considering the burden overzealous fans put on him by calling him a profound punk messiah.
Costello refuses to analyze any of his music for fear of inviting other winded judgements, something he feels wrecked rock in the first place. "I choose not to explain myself," he says. Thus, knowledgeable fans don't raise eyebrows when Costello belts through songs like "Watching the Detectives," in which a frustrated husband can't distract his wife from a grizzly TV thriller and ends up shooting her. Such reliance on the macabre gives Costello his fiendish air and first earned him the punk label. And with songs like "Good Squad" and "Two Little Hitlers," Armed Forces doesn't clean up his act any. But if that's not your type of song material, Costello understands. As he might be explaining in "Hitlers":
"You have your reservations, I'm bought and sold...
I'll face the music, I'll face the facts,
Even when we walk in polka dots and checkered slacks"
Of course, Costello still aims for gut reaction, but at least, unlike other punk acts, he does it with flare and literacy. In "Senior Service," he lashes out against aging ("It's the death that's worse than fate"), but offers solutions. ("If you should drop dead tonight, then we won't have to ask you twice"), But of course, true to form, Costello can't be all bitter. Coming on like George Harrison, Costello makes his own world unity plea on the album. Backed by a pulsating beat, Elvis moans:
"As I walk through this wicked world,
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity
I ask myself if all is lost
Is there only pain and hatred and misery?
And each time I think of suicide,
there's one thing I wanna know
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?"
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