|
A first encounter with a new Elvis Costello album is somewhat like one or those strange love affairs that happen along, every once in a while. You know the sort of thing; eyes meet across a crowded room — and nothing happens. All you see is an ordinary chap, with a myopic gaze and a chip evenly balanced upon each shoulder.
But this is a man who can guerilla-attack the head and the heart with his vision of How Things Are — a vision which is as clear-sighted and detached as a soaring hawk. Suddenly, to your immense surprise, you're in love.
For me, the first spin of a new Elvis Costello disc is inevitably surrounded by ritual: put the album on, take it off in disappointment. Not what I expected at all, he's blown it this time. Make a pot of tea. Play it again. And again. Bells go off. Ah yes, welcome back, Elvis old son.
Costello further fuels the initial unease by refusing to stay with one particular musical genre long enough to be comfortably categorised.
On his latest offering, Spike, all the complexities and unpredictabilities are present and correct, with a few extra thrown in for good measure, making this supremely unlikeable album his most cherishable work to date.
Spike is initially difficult to get close to, due to the lack of a central sound, or common theme to link one song with another, with its cacophony of brass, trad. jazz and cabaret tumbling off each track.
However, the multi-instrumental vocals of Elvis hold it all together as he returns to form, sounding more authoritative and acerbic than ever.
Elvis, a committed Beatles fan, employs the services of Paul McCartney on three tracks, "This Town," the playful cameo of marital jungle warfare "Pads, Paws and Claws," and "Veronica," which uses the Costello device of coating a bitter lyrical pill with a sweet melody.
"Veronica" which deals with an old woman slipping in and out of senility, is set to an irresistible pop groove.
The Irish influence is marked on the album, with musicians such as Steve Wickham, Davy Spillane, Christy Moore and Dónal Lunny adding power to numbers such as "Any King's Shilling," "Miss Macbeth" and the spine-tingling, scathing attack on Maggie Thatcher "Tramp the Dirt Down" ("When England was the whore of the world / Margaret was her madam / and the future looked as bright and as clear as the black tarmacadam.").
On Spike, the storyteller has a thousand guises; from satirist on "God's Comic" to moralist on "Let Him Dangle" to abandoned lover on the cabaret guitar of "Baby Plays Around." Typically, it's a deceptive album — watch out carefully, or you may find a spike through your heart...
| 
