Melody Maker, July 31, 1982

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Melody Maker

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Man Out Of Time / When The Hangover Strikes

Elvis Costello & The Attractions / Squeeze

Colin Irwin

Two special commemorative singles, issued as a special tribute to the passing of Allan Jones's bachelorhood. Both ooze melancholy and angst, both from artists licking their words from the unfamiliar experience of a critical panning of their albums, both seriously smitten with after-party blues and insecurity.

Squeeze's moroseness is shrouded in smoky jazz club atmospherics, a drawling bass-line barely keeping them upright until a bunch of strings gently escort them to the toilet. Odd choice for a single, but perfect for a Dean Martin cover.

Elvis typically attacks his own troubled hangover with rather more lust and spirit, the spry endurance of the Attractions refusing to let him wallow in self-pity the way Squeeze do. "Will you still love a man out of time?" he wails, and the heart-strings get a rare old thrashing.

It's a brilliant record, fully endorsed by the additional presence of a furious new version of "Town Crier" and the lightly poisonous wedding song "Imperial Bedroom."

By the way, Jonesy's dying words as a single man amounted to an agonised, unreserved retraction of his previous bitter condemnation of the Imperial Bedroom album. It was his last wish that I should inform you of this.

Dave Edmunds: "From Small Things Big Things Come" (Arista). Well, if Bruce Springsteen writes a song just for you, then the very least you can do is whack it out as a single. I mean, he needs the royalties doesn't he? This is okay — it'll give Jonesy a chance to wear his blue suede shoes when he gets back from his yacht, and it'll bring a smile to middle-aged housewives who cried when Elvis Presley got called up. If people must try and pretend it's 1959 again, then it's better that it's Edmunds doing it and not Showaddywaddy or The Jets or some other snotty little nonentity trading on people's misguided sense of nostalgia.

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Melody Maker, July 31, 1982


Colin Irwin reviews the single for "Man Out Of Time" and Squeeze's "When The Hangover Strikes"

Images

1982-07-31 Melody Maker page 19 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.

Cover and page scan.
1982-07-31 Melody Maker cover.jpg 1982-07-31 Melody Maker page 19.jpg

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