New Musical Express, June 2, 1979

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NME

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Elvis Costello


Kevin Fitzgerald

Royal Iris Ferry, Liverpool

They call him a fascist but he looks like Elvis.

After a crusade Stateside, seeping the steel-noses down, the Flip City Kid returns. You can pay for the ticket or fork out on the gang-plank, buy your pint and start ligging in the rigging.

This swashbuckling soiree was advertised as "The Cruise Of The Century" and was to feature the Yachts and Clive Langer and the Boxes — Radar Records' new, passionate, bright young things. The majestic old tub passes the scouse cultural heritage, pulls up and the Deaf School Cats start rubbing their rimless goggles in bright young anticipation.

The grey daylight means that it feels like an afternoon and when Elvis does appear (to an indifferent/ incredulous reception), the band look anaemic and unhealthy. The stage has a tiny tots' playground rainbow area to frame the turns, like.

Togged up like a teddy boy on the African Queen in a baggy white suite and crepes, Costello grins, explains the "surprise" appearance and sets the band rattling into their pinball-flashy ricochetting set. The Merseybeats' number "I Stand Accused" (might have known), is executed with cautious precision but plenty of smiles and sweaty foreheads.

The inter-song rapping is minimal, but reveals a scouse accent from Elizabeth Arden's finest songsmith, rolled 'r's sticking out like broken bottles in a sandpit.

"Oliver's Army" is next: a tune that makes your feet move and words that make your flesh crawl. By now the ferry is swaying and rising, as are a few just-eaten dinners. As I turn a fetching shade of pale green, another of Costello's Clattering Classics crackles out — "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea." With added dub technique, the drums are ringing, spidery and epileptic, the guitar phrases taut, shortened or lengthened; cut to Elvis with his bottom teeth showing.

The reception for "Chelsea" is solid applause sure; but Clive Langer, and later on The Yachts, are far more enthusiastically greeted.

Now, a predatory Bootsy/Dread bass stalks about, then the drums tumble in like oil drums dropped down a lift shaft. On board the Grey Star Ferryboat it's forward, idren, onto New Brighton not Zion; watch the swell and the dockland; "watch" the detectives.

The guitar takes over from the organ and guides the melody through the spiked dub (again) territory, cymbals and drums exploding like grenades.

Elvis grins, announcing that he and the band are "getting into another boat because we're entering dangerous water." "Accidents Will Happen," a dull cog in the sparkling singles machine, is shown the door and the Mystery Attractions stride off. The Reticent One shouts "Thanks... see ya in the bar," and disappears for the evening.

What a card.


Tags: Royal Iris FerryLiverpoolThe AttractionsFlip CityYachtsClive Langer & The BoxesThe MerseybeatsI Stand AccusedOliver's Army(I Don't Want To Go To) ChelseaWatching The DetectivesAccidents Will HappenNew BrightonElizabeth ArdenNick LoweLabour Of LustRadar RecordsJake RivieraJesus Of CoolRockpileStiff tourHeart Of The CityBrinsley SchwarzDave EdmundsBilly BremnerTerry WilliamsHuey LewisBob AndrewsThe RumourMickey JuppBig Kick, Plain Scrap!I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass



Photo by Marcus Featherby.
1979-06-02 New Musical Express photo 02 mf.jpg

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New Musical Express, June 2, 1979


Kevin Fitzgerald reviews Elvis Costello & The Attractions opening for the Yachts and Clive Langer & The Boxes, Tuesday, May 22, 1979, Royal Iris Ferry, Liverpool, England.


Charles Shaar Murray reviews Nick Lowe's Labour Of Lust.

Images

1979-06-02 New Musical Express page 51 clipping 01.jpg1979-06-02 New Musical Express photo 01 mf.jpg1979-06-02 New Musical Express clipping 03.jpg
Photo by Marcus Featherby.


A new Hi in Lowe Fi


Charles Shaar Murray

Nick Lowe
Labour Of Lust

1979-06-02 New Musical Express page 37 clipping 01.jpg

In which a good ol' boy comes home.

Persons familiar with Nick Lowe in his recent incarnation as cynical-old-Basher, the man who'll steal any lick that isn't nailed down, disguise himself as anything on earth to make a buck and ally himself with unsavoury people like Jake Riviera and Elvis Costello in order to form vicious, self-congratulatory little cliques . . . boy, are they in for a shock or what?

On the cover of Jesus Of Cool, Lowe manifested himself as everything from leather-clad mirror-shaded sleaze-rocker to dumb hippie to wasted jetsetter to the greasy-haired dyspeptic hungover opportunist that most of his detractors like to think he really was. The dislocated ragbag of pearls and pigshit that the sleeve turned out to house reinforced Lowe's rep as seedy, scheming Machiavelli, and as he metamorphosed from lurching pissartist to gumchewing truculent wideboy on Rockpile gigs and Stiff tour, it seemed that since the epoch-making release of "So It Goes"/ "Heart Of The City" as Stiff BUY 1, Lowe had done a fairly thorough job of reinventing himself.

After all, apart from a gang of superannuated pubrockers, who remembered the diffident, ponytailed bassist-vocalist-composer who'd slugged along all those years with Brinsley Schwarz, the ultimate no-hope goodtime losers who declared non-violent war on the dinosaurs and fought them in the cellars and the bars? Yep, that Nick Lowe. You didn't miss him? Well, he's back.

Bend an eye onto the big black 'n' white pic of our humble hero on the inner sleeve of this album. Dig the lumberjack shirt and the sheepish grin and god does he ever need a haircut (Jesus!). Pure pubrock for pissed people is what Nick's selling here, and after the demented eclecticism of his work as producer and performer since '76, it's about the last thing he could've done which would still have been unpredictable.

Cases: the featured musicians throughout are Dave Edmunds and Bill Bremner (guitars and backing vox) and the immortal Terry Williams on drums (listen, God, when you get around to setting up that Rock Drummers Hall Of Fame you keep talking about, book Tel a seat as near to Charlie Watts as you can, awright?) plus guest shots from Bluesy Huey Lewis on harp and former Brinsleyite Bob Andrews (now gainfully employed with The Rumour) on synth, who get one apiece. The music stays within earshot of the old territories: R&B, country, lush pop with a bite and the odd touch of swaggering barroom rock 'n' roll. Real straight arrow. The only surprise is no surprises.

First play through and it sounds a touch drab with the excellent single "Crackin' Up" as the highspot and the wimp ballad "You Make Me" as the lowest of the Lowe (damn thing's so soppy that it shorted out my stereo). Stick with it and you groove on the fake aggression of "Born Fighter" (just the sort of thing us closet wimps like to stay in and listen to when we'd be going out and getting into fights if we were Real Men), the extraordinary every-instrument-playing-percussion "Clapping Song" ripoff of "Big Kick, Plain Scrap!," the innocent double-entendres of Mickey Jupp's "Switchboard Susan," the mock-Spectorisms of "Skin Deep" (which I hate 'cause I wrote a song called "Skin Deep" myself and people are gonna think I stole it off him, as if anyone could be said to have stolen from Nick Lowe, bloody magpie that he is, grrr), the pure country corn of "Endless Grey Ribbon," the R&B riffing of "Love So Fine"...

Nick Lowe's built his current rep by cooking up fiendishly frothy pop confectionery with arsenic frosting. Here he turns around and re-enters the room with a big platter of pure beef hamburgers (or pure ham beefburgers — have it your way). Recorded as a bookend to the new Edmunds album, which also features a straightahead Rockpile line-up (Edmunds and Bremner on guitars, Williams on drums and Lowe on bass — weren't you listening?), Labour Of Lust replaces ingenuity with integrity, and thereby promotes the specious if unstated theory that the two are mutually exclusive.

I love the honesty and commitment of Lowe's Rockpile-oriented work but I miss the clever-dickery of his Jesus Of Cool stuff, and possibly he does his best work when the two come face to face on things like "They Called It Rock" ('Pile version available on the B-side of the "Breaking Glass" single) or the live cut of "Heart Of The City."

"Crackin' Up" is the champ of this album for precisely that reason, and people who dig Nick Lowe because they love being amiably conned by a master may find Labour Of Lust to be unaccustomedly plain fare by comparison.


Cover and page scan.
1979-06-02 New Musical Express cover.jpg page 51

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