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Veronica
Elvis Costello
Paul Lester
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With Costello striking that fabled, legs-akimbo, standard Class-Of-77 punk pose on the cover, the discerning observer may be led to assume that "Veronica" is a return to prime-time fine form. The discerning observer could be right. "Veronica," a premier fragment of skewered, spikey pop that shares authorship between Declan MacManus and Paul McCartney, is ripped directly from Elvis' latest long playing meisterwork. Actually, Spike seems to have gashed a divide between the critics the size of The Wailing Wall in a way that no Costello record has since Almost Blue. No matter. "Veronica" is a gorgeous, layered thing with multi-tracked vocals, a chord structure of labyrinthine complexity and a sorrowful narrative story of rejected love, all to a melancholy Merseybeat. Plus you get that old Swinging Blue Jeans tickler, "You're No Good," dusted down and pumped up on the flip. It's great to hear Costello's intellectual hard-man growl again, a veritable lion amongst pop's paltry pigeons. Still The King.
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King Of America / Blood & Chocolate
Melody Maker
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King Of America was the album that made Costello worth listening to again, after the strained conceits of Imperial Bedroom, the blustering Punch The Clock, and awkward, transitional Goodbye Cruel World. A brilliant appropriation of narrative songwriting styles and traditional musics, KOA also laid the ghost of a confining persona Costello had finally outgrown. The result was his most emotionally generous and compassionate LP to date. Blood & Chocolate, which followed within months, was a much more furious record, a nightmarish description of love and loathing. The Attractions were at their peak here — claustrophobically intense, murderous and unhinged. Costello, appropriately cast as Napoleon Solo, was on a short fuse throughout. A serious commercial failure, Blood & Chocolate nevertheless remains Costello's most compelling album of the Eighties.
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The Pogues: Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
Melody Maker
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As raw, crumpled and uncouth as its predecessor, the second Pogues album concluded that if they had considered sophistication, it had been saved up for a sunny day. They weren't ready for it just yet. Produced by Elvis Costello, it gave birth to a trio of minor hit singles in "A Pair Of Brown Eyes," "Sally MacLennane" and "Dirty Old Town." Clearly, their star was in the ascendant. If anything, the songs on Rum Sodomy were more fully realised than those on Red Roses For Me and proved that The Pogues had grown up or cleaned up their act. As they made the crucial promotion from the pub cellars to the larger halls, they were packing more emotion in. More than anything, their second album was a testament to Shane's maturity as a songwriter. They were on the verge of great fame as the popular image of a motley crew of shambling lushes began to recede. The small time was now behind them. Rum, Sodomy & The Lash was a rollicking great entrance into the big time.
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Clipping and advertisement.
Backlash
Jim
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I was dismayed to read something on the lines of "Costello is our finest wordsmith outside of Morrissey" in your review of Spike.
This sort of wisdom is trotted out each time either of them release a record and represents a kind of knee-jerk journalism that's as prevalent and irritating as the fabled "build-'em-up-and-knock'em-down" syndrome.
Perhaps instead, Costello can barely articulate a real emotion among the bluster and lyrical pyrotechnics, while Morrissey lives in an effete half-world of his own devising, his entire early career based round a single asexual fumbling with an older man in the front of a Wolseley by the sound of it, his current work drawn from his fan-mail and a wistful nostalgia. Couldn't both be said to suffer from being too prolific? Maybe neither of them can actually touch the masses, bat simply have a direct line to the vague, disaffected longings bred in music journalists and their disciples. Just consider it.
I'm tired of reading screeds of drooling raves for this sort of artist only to see next time "after the disappointment of the last album." Do a favour! Stop insulting us and own up. The Smiths had half a dozen wonderful songs and four times as many "Shakespeare's Sisters" and "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" drivel filler. Costello has 10 meaningless epigrams to every truly effective line. I found it ironic that when he finally got round to making a raw and direct record like Blood & Chocolate, reviewers fudged for fear it was all too real. Costello, Smiths, R.E.M. (whose every album is greeted by someone saying, "The others were a bit dodgy but this is the one") are all allowed to move in the charmed region where reviews are guaranteed glowing and they're deemed infallible, beyond mere pop. Somehow no one dare say otherwise. The same thing will happen to The House Of love and The Sundays because some collective consciousness in King's Reach Tower wants it to. Journalists love to coat a few chosen ones with a protective film and call them gods. It's a phoney kind of innocent awe in which you're indulging. It's beyond enthusiasm for genuine talent and sycophancy. You have to construct these idols to justify your existence. It makes you prophets and IPC profits. How neat. How very sad.
— Jim
How very unfair to be so damning on the basis of what seems to be nothing more than a vague, moody recollection of reviews probably written about five year ago, possibly not even in this paper. Get down to cases, lad, we're not exactly sure who, or what, you're complaining about. If, as it seems, you want some sort of temperate approach to journalism, small sense, read the tiny contributions made by Robin Denselow in The Guardian. We prefer immoderate awe, acrobatic descriptions of pleasure, or, at the other extreme, rampant blasts of derision against the "Gods." No half-measures. You seem to share our love of the language — why aren't you with us? Letter of the week, in many ways.
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Cover and page scan.
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