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Hurray for Elvis Costello, who has never made a bad record but lately has cut a lot of records that were so private and subtle and sophisticated and precious I got scared away from them.
Blood and Chocolate returns to the simple, stripped-down but powerfully expressed music of Costello's late-'70s albums. It does not reach the sustained excellence of the great Costello albums This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy! and Trust. But it contains at least one Costello masterpiece, "I Want You," the insistent, forceful plea of an obsessed lover. It sounds like the treatment for a great thriller starring Martin Sheen — only Sheen might not be obsessive enough to play the great Costello.
Blood and Chocolate reunites Costello with his great band, the Attractions. Pianist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas are to Costello what Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner were to John Coltrane. They're the skilled interpreters of a magnificent visionary.
On Blood and Chocolate Costello again decided to make his own guitar a force in his music, and that music benefits, particularly "I Want You." Costello's guitar style was succinctly described by one writer as limited but gripping, and it is. It is nearly as expressive as Costello's emotional voice.
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