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The euphoria Costello once inspired by linking incisive, clever lyrics to British new-wave rock is largely gone. After 10 albums, Costello has lost the "angry young man with a brain" theme that supplied his early career with so much impetus. Now, he's just another songwriter with a product to sell.
But his product remains fascinating and richly crafted, even if it suffers in comparison to his earlier works. Goodbye Cruel World contains one of his best hard-rock numbers, "The Deportees Club," in which the singer finds himself trapped in a weird bar, where Americana has gone rancid. ("pray to the saints and all the martyrs for the secret life of Frank Sinatra.")
The album also includes one of Costello's best works of political irony, the soft but bitter "Peace in Our Time." ("They're lighting a bonfire up on every hilltop in the land, just another tiny island invaded when he's got the whole world in his hands, and the bells take their toll once again in a victory chime, and we can thank God that we've finally got peace in our time.")
This might also be the album with which Costello cashes in on the British soul revival, which he helped start. His own lilting "The Only Flame in Town" sounds like the hit that has avoided him all these years, and Farnell Jenkins' 1973 ballad "I Wanna Be Loved" is the most unabashedly romantic number Costello has ever crooned.
Between these high points are the usual curiosities of sound and expression that keep Costello on everyone's "most inscrutable" list. The most intriguing is a song called "Worthless Thing," which seems to be an attack on Elvis Presley fans. ("Nightclubs full of grave robbers from Memphis, Tenn., and Las Vegas body snatchers; 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.")
This set is being called minor Costello, but in fact it tracks better from start to finish than the critically acclaimed Imperial Bedroom. I'd compare it to Trust, a Costello album that didn't make any headlines, but certainly stands up as solid — and sometimes exceptional — record-making.
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