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From his hybrid stage name to his Buddy Holly glasses, Elvis Costello likes nostalgia. His songs mix rockabilly, cool jazz and country-and-western; on his last album, Spike, he adopted the persona of Spike Jones, the 1950s musical comic. However, having come of age during the heyday of British punk, Costello isn't overly sentimental about nostalgia: He recasts the past through the not-so-rosy lenses of his thick black glasses. Thus he calls a sampling of his own history Girls, Girls, Girls.
Of course, there is much more than music for a peep show inside. If nothing else, Girls is the portfolio that should gain Costello a place in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Girls mixes and matches 51 tracks on compact disc (47 on the cassette) from 1976-1986; almost all of them are available on albums, so this is not a rarities collection. Rather, Girls is a product of the artist's nostalgia neurosis and the marketing of a new technology; it's Costello's self-summation for the post-vinyl era.
There's a certain quaintness to these guitar-and-drum-fueled songs. The sense of urgency that once made Costello the angriest young man alive now seems distant — "oh yeah, he was a new wave." If you grew up listening to Costello, it's hard not to feel a rush back in time when you hear "Green Shirt" or "Mystery Dance." Girls intersperses such hits among lesser-known songs, forcing you to focus on the words and music to seek connections and rationalize sequences. Common themes become clear; side one begins and ends with murder mysteries; side three opens with a trio of songs about, well, girls; the last side weighs in with political and social commentary.
Yet it's the particularity of these songs that is most rewarding, the precision of the language matched to the sharpness of the hooks. On "Pump It Up" Costello reels out lines like, "You want to torture her / You want to talk to her / All the things you bought for her / Could not get her temperature." You believe the liner notes in which Costello admits to being in a vodka and amphetamine frenzy when he wrote the song. (Remember, kids, he's a professional. Don't try this at home.)
Although songs like these are spectacularly crafted, they have none of the stasis of a "well-made" conventional pop song. Part of it is delivery: Costello consummates his oddball musical genius with a performance style that saves him from becoming a household name. He's a mealy-mouthed but unquenchable singer who, with the aid of his band, the Attractions, and producers such as Nick Lowe and T Bone Burnett, finds the most idiosyncratic settings for his peculiar tunes. He could probably have never had a hit with "Girls Talk," what with its bass recalling "the repeated phrase from [John Coltrane's] 'A Love Supreme' " — according to Costello's notes. But Dave Edmunds did.
Perhaps the most recurring subject on Girls is time: "Strict Time," "Man Out of Time," "Clowntime Is Over." With Girls, Costello has documented songs — moments — he's afraid 'might get lost. Like all histories, it's incomplete: A Costello portfolio without "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" is like a Van Gogh retrospective without "Sunflowers." Fortunately, Costello's still got time; it'll probably be on the DAT anthology.
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