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A few short months after releasing a deeply honest record and reverting to his real name, Elvis Costello is back with more songs and his stage moniker. But there's no discernible difference in his art's direction.
His singing is still jarringly truthful. In any one line of "I Want You" (an adieu to a great but miserable love affair) his harsh croak emits sarcasm, anguish, dignity.
He never reduces old themes to hackneyed cliche. A spurned lover doesn't cry into his beer, he's "standing in the supermarket shouting at the customers."
He embeds unforgettable choruses in songs that might otherwise be tedious, like the rambling "Battered Old Bird" and the self-consciously wordy "Tokyo Storm Warning."
With most songs simply exploring the effect of bad relationships on an angry man's psyche, Bread and Chocolate isn't as stunning a statement as last spring's King of America, which combined history, social commentary and introspection in vivid vignettes.
But the disquieting force of his emotion and the array of strong, sad melodies might well mean that both the first and last positions in my Top 10 of '86 go to this eccentric, challenging, writer, whatever his name is.
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