|
When Elvis Costello appeared in solo concerts just a few months ago, his lean and passionate performances of "Peace in Our Time" and "Worthless Thing" created substantial anticipation for the then-unreleased recorded versions of those tunes. Costello is back on tour with his band, The Attractions, appearing tomorrow night at Forest Hills Stadium. But for this longtime fan, the latest Costello album is his most disappointing.
On earlier, hard-edged albums such as My Aim Is True, Armed Forces and Trust, Costello proved himself to be the most vital analytical songwriter to come out of England since, perhaps, John Lennon. His dispatches from the front lines of the battle between the sexes were taut and piercing. His blend of rage and coherence, of fury and melody made him the punk era's answer to Hoagy Carmichael.
But recently Costello seems bored with rock, and seems to be taking the suggestion of stature as a mainstream tunesmith quite a bit too seriously. His love songs such as "The Comedians" and "Love Field" are devoid of wit and laden with a self-consciousness startling for a veteran on his 10th album. Costello's images on songs such as "Joe Porterhouse" have none of the crisp subtlety of his best work. On "The Great Unknown," one of a number of apparent antiwar songs here. Costello unimaginatively invokes Delilah as a symbol of a man's loss of strength.
More disappointing than the lack of inspired wordplay are the awkward arrangements that hold Costello's words hostage. "The Only Flame in Town" may be the best song on the album, but it's little more than a pale regurgitation of musical ideas Curtis Mayfield left behind 10 years ago (both with the later Impressions and on soundtracks such as Superfly). "I Wanna Be Loved" adds little to the kind of arrangement of this song you might hear in a motel lounge, while "Inch by Inch" sounds like a psychedelicized Peggy Lee.
Oh, there are reasons to hedge. "The Deportees Club" rocks briskly and contains some strangely daring lines: "I pray to the saints and all the martyrs / for the secret life of Frank Sinatra," he sings. "Sour Milk-Cow Blues" explores the subject of betrayal with the same bite and passion with which Costello has often treated this favorite topic.
Though some hear "Worthless Thing" as an indictment of MTV ("They're going to take this cable now and stick it down your throat"), I hear it as a frustrated rumination on stardom. For the first time. Costello admits some sense of kinship with Elvis the first. "All the cars and pills and girls who tore his shirt to tatters / Do you know how tall he was 'cause that is all that really matters? / Do you know his mother's last name, do you think that he's divine? / You've seen the film, you've read the book / You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine."
But the lesson of Goodbye Cruel World seems obvious in the light of the fate of Presley, who was done in by the allure of middle-of-the-road artistic respectability. In other words, those born to rock should never abdicate their birthright.
| 
