Michigan Law School Res Gestae, November 10, 1982

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Michigan Law Res Gestae

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Costello: Clever romantic's bedroom antics


A.D. Maclin

New wave's doyen, as Newsweek called 27-year-old Elvis Costello last month, has been something of a chameleon during his five-year tenure in popdom. He's changed his genre, if not many times, then at least as often, as King Chameleon Bob Dylan. But unlike Dylan, Costello has suggested not so much spiritual upheaval in his progression from album to album as a desire to experiments.

Costello — why don't people call him by his surname anyway? — is deep into tension in his Imperial Bedroom, an anthology of lyrics born of marital disharmony. Fourteen new, original tracks here — a lot for a single album: but Declan MacManus, as he was called when down and out in Liverpool and London, has always been ambitious in wax.

Bedroom's most remarkable bit of furniture is "The Long Honeymoon," in which is ensconced a warning inspired perhaps by the UCC, but artistically presented nonetheless:

"All the bedroom lights go out
as the neighborhood gets quiet
Everything in heaven and earth
is almost right

There's a wife who's wondering
where her husband could be tonight
When the telephone rang only once
she took a dreadful fright

...It's been a long honeymoon
she thought too late and spoke too soon
there's no money-back guarantee on
future happiness...

"Honeymoon" stands apart from Bedroom's other songs in much the same way that Almost Blue, Costello's "country" album, stood apart from its predecessors; it leaves out the trenchant cleverness that has so often manifested Costello's lyrical wit. Instead, "Honeymoon" derives its strength from dramatic tension. The wife is home alone, waiting, her mind wandering:

"All the movies and the papers
feature the murders of lonely women
If he isn't in by ten,
shell call her best friend
Why doesn't he come home?
why does her friend's phone keep on ringing...

It may be that Costello has developed pop's finest sense of irony — even making his music tease his words (as in "Long Honeymoon," where wedding music sweetly blends with the story of a marriage gone sour). Elvis Costello, however, has yet to meld much more than music and words. Ah, sighs the muse, there's so much to synthesize: imagery and story line, phonological and semantic cleverness, form and matter (listening, Elvis? ) — form and matter, formand matter, formandmatter.

It's like this: on one end of the Costelloid gradation sits the story; on the other, cleverness. In between there's precious little grey area. What's been bothersome about Elvis Costello's songs from the start has been the absence of integration of these lyrical virtues.

In Costello's Bedroom you'll find lots of curious little juxtapositions, as in "Man out of Time":

"Days of Dutch courage
just three French letters
and a German sense of humour
He's got a mind like a sewer
and a heart like a fridge .. .

You'll find an assortment of hastily packaged, but irresistibly cute rhymes, as in "Shabby Doll":

"There's a girl in this dress
there's always a girl in distress
She's just a shabby doll
She's so sure she's self-possessed
Then again, she's half-undressed
She's just a shabby doll...

You'll find more than occasionally a memorable image — like "Man out of Time"'s "tight grip on the short hairs of the public imagination."

You'll even find Costello reveling in sounds like a tot in a sandbox — as Bruce Springsteen did a decade ago ("Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer." and so on) and as poet Edith Sitwell did a half-century ago. Consider Costello's "Pidgin English":

"You go, "Cheep, cheep, cheep"
between bullseyes and bluster
Stiff as your poker face
keener than mustard

From your own backyard
to the land of exotica
From the truth society
to neurotic erotica...

Yet, just when you feel as though you've been caught in Costello's web of words, you will, inevitably, be disappointed to learn that it's not so much a web that's keeping you up as a collection of loose ends that — intriguing though they may be — must let you down.

It was, you will recall, the trick of the pre-disco groups that many of us adolesced on: present striking, if unrelated, images or collocations, and rely upon a strong musical hook to make the song a success. Well, Costello certainly outclasses most of his lyrical forbears, but his songs carry too much sixties-style dead weight.

Of course, Costello sometimes succeeds in blending more than words and music — by making otherwise discrete images work together just a bit. Storytelling and cleverness just about come together at, for example, one point in "...And In Every Home," a Gilbert & Sullivan-like romp in which Costello demonstrates that Dylan Thomas has not cornered the market in polyvalent metaphors.

"Holding your life in your hand
with an artificial limp wrist
and so young a blade
has become a has-been
looking for a new twist...

But, in the end. this latest and entirely worthwhile album intensifies a sneaky feeling: while Costello's got an uncommonly good ear, a poet's vision, and the ability to tell a story, it may be a long crawl from the pleasures of the imperial bedroom to the pleasures of holistic songwriting.


Tags: Imperial BedroomThe Long HoneymoonMan Out Of TimePidgin English...And In Every HomeAlmost BlueDeclan MacManusBruce SpringsteenBob Dylan

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Res Gestae, November 10, 1982


A.D. Maclin reviews Imperial Bedroom.

Images

1982-11-10 Michigan Law School Res Gestae page 06 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.

Page scan.
1982-11-10 Michigan Law School Res Gestae page 06.jpg

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