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Elvis Costello was a critics' darling, they joked, because he looked just like a critic. Looks aren't the half of it. For detailed contextualisation, procedural description, colourful anecdote and cutting critique, his terrific essays that accompany each re-release do my job better than me. Cheers, mate. Yet his self-analytical bent and vast stylistic range is also a curse. For many, listening to his music inspires respect more than transports of delight. They read his work as an impenetrable referential game, and seldom weep. Not me. Like Bowie — and "Life On Mars" is surely a Costello song in all but name — when all the moving parts click, he is right up there.
Low and Heroes accompanied the making of his third album, 1979's Armed Forces, but musically and verbally he was coming from the intersection of Abbey Road and Highway 61. The peak is "Party Girl" — not for the first or last time he sings of a guy bitterly obsessing over a babe way out of his league — which builds to a climax that refashions three of Abbey Road's best hooks to wrench out your guts.
Armed Forces was originally to be called Emotional Fascism, which would have over-literalised his poetic link between private anxiety and social stormclouds. "Oliver's Army," "Goon Squad," "Chemistry Class" and "Two Little Hitlers" are classics in this vein; even more powerfully three years later, "Beyond Belief" propels Imperial Bedroom like a hurricane of dread, hurling us headlong into the dark heart of dysfunction telegraphed by its title. Produced by former Abbey Road engineer and Beatles veteran Geoff Emerick, it is lushly orchestrated, glitteringly detailed, yet like Nick Lowe's work on Armed Forces the songs and in particular the voice have room to breathe. A virtuoso demonstration of the singer's craft in defiance of a natural gift you could parody as Nerd King Cole, almost every number knocks the wind out of you, from the "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later)" pastiche of "Man Out Of Time" to "You Little Fool," also a showcase for Bruce Thomas whose basslines, like classic Macca, are models of dramatic invention.
Paul McCartney himself co-authors Mighty Like A Rose's peak, "So Like Candy," a despairing wander through the wreckage of lost love, wherein co-producer Mitchell Froom translates "Fool On The Hill"'s Mellotron flute part from tranquillity to tragedy, while "Couldn't Call it Unexpected" echoes The Band.
Though a very fine record, kitchen-sink arrangements often burden already overworked songwriting routines, and such is its stylistic diversity that it feels more like a collection than a free-standing classic, which its two companions here most assuredly are.
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