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These albums by two of Britain's best singer-songwriters stand among their best work.
Jackson and Costello have long been associated with the punk/ power pop surge of the late 1970s, strenuously verbal, nervy and tough.
It is Jackson's album that is the most immediately attractive. Jackson — a caustically funny lyricist with a brilliant sense of melody — has been compared to Costello so many times Jackson must wake up in the morning wondering where his glasses are. He has been in a bit of a holding pattern since his commercial breakthrough, Night and Day, in 1982.
Good albums such as Big World and the remarkably passionate document Joe Jackson Band Live have been lost in the shuffle, mostly because after achieving his biggest successes on MTV he decided music videos are a bad idea and refused to make them.
This did the same thing for his career that Hudson Hawk did for Bruce Willis, so there's a video this time, for one of Jackson's best songs ever.
"Obvious Song," Jackson's opener, takes on the same concerns Costello does in his opening cut, "The Other Side of Summer." While Jackson describes a millionaire pop star "getting three to the gallon in a big white car" while telling a man in the jungle to stop chopping down trees, Costello gets much more specific: "Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine no possessions' / A poor little schoolboy who said 'We don't need no lessons'?"
Their musical approaches are similar, as well. While Jackson cheerfully skewers the melodic cliches of pop music and video with overblown guitar heroics, Costello drenches "Summer" with Beach Boys-styled harmonies.
Costello's reference to John Lennon is especially intriguing: this album (as did his last record, Spike) features songwriting collaborations with Paul McCartney. "So Like Candy" and "Playboy to a Man" touch on McCartney's melodic interests and are in turn a little more compassionate than Costello might usually be. This collaboration (which also turned out the Costello hit "Veronica" and the McCartney hit "My Brave Face") may be the best thing that has happened to either of them in a while.
Jackson has been musing on the nature of musical success, and this shows up all over Laughter & Lust. On one hand, his "The Old Songs" takes radio to task for lack of adventurousness; on the other hand, the album also includes an energetic but largely unnecessary version of Fleetwood Mac's blues trope "Oh Well."
Their musical approaches are divergent where their subject matter tends to coalesce. Costello's album features big-name players like The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Saturday Night Live's T-Bone Wolk, Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, James Burton and Nick Lowe. Drummer Pete Thomas is the only member of Costello's The Attractions on the record.
Jackson, in contrast, relies on his core players such as bassist Graham Maby (with Jackson since his first album Look Sharp!), Joy Hadjopoulos and Joy Askew. The only real addition is guitarist Tom Teeley. Jackson has long decried the pro-guitar prejudice of most pop radio, but Teeley is a crisply melodic player who negotiates Jackson's intricate chord changes with style.
Both albums are strong testaments to the craft of songwriting, and any comparisons between Jackson and Costello are largely cosmetic. Think of Costello as this era's Cole Porter, spinning out dazzling wordplay and lush melody, while Jackson might be our Irving Berlin — less flashy, more workmanlike, but still possessing a strong sense of song and determination.
If Costello is an artist with all that implies, then Jackson is a craftsman; both know how to reach an audience, and should with these records.
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