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What's all this about 1986 being a boring year, nothing happened, waste of time blah blah blah. Hold tight, within its 12 months two of the finest LPs of the year, hell, pop's recent history, came out, and from the pen of one man: good old Elvis Costello.
At the Royal Albert Hall songs from these two albums, Blood & Chocolate and King Of America, fought for and eventually found their place within the wider body of Costello's work. And what an extraordinary canon it is. Three hours and 30 plus of the best songs written in the last 10 years, each its very own little masterpiece. Costello has that happy knack of the great songwriter in that each of his compositions are rich in memories, strong in the atmosphere of their inception. "Alison" and "Watching The Detectives," the thrill of early punk and discovering a new talent right through to the renaissance of last year's painful "I Want You." In between, damn solid pop.
Occasionally critics find it necessary to endorse the pop sensibilities of such unfashionables as ABBA, seeing it all as awfully, terribly relevant. Costello's approach? Just get on and sing the song. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" was performed in winningly simple fashion, indicating not only his grasp of the music itself, but also his skill as a communicator. Long gone is the sullen misanthropist, snarling the spite of "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea." He has been able to step back a little from his songs, maintaining their original intensity, but not at the expense of his own performance. He remained a witty, warm communicator, ever ready with the quip.
Friday night was "Elvis Sings" night, which meant The Attractions in relaxed support and the famed Spinning Songbook, a cunning device allowing members of the audience to spin a wheel to select a Costello classic. A simple device, and just a bit of fun? Well you have to be pretty confident about the quality of your material to present it with all the tacky bonhomie of a nightmarish quiz show.
So, Costello cracks it, a man out of time as far as the charts perceive it, but live Napoleon Dynamite is exploding all over the place. The best there is. No contest.
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