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Englishmen Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe are longtime friends and Musical collaborators, and both have just released albums. Costello's Goodbye Cruel World (Columbia) and Lowe's Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit (Columbia) offer the simple, sometimes thin, pleasures of familiar sounds and themes.
For Costello and his band, the Attractions, Goodbye Cruel World follows last year's Punch the Clock, the singer-songwriter's biggest commercial success in America. Though Costello is a major star in England and Europe, his eloquent anger and musical eccentricity had never managed to crack the narrow confines of American radio in any consistent way.
That's why Punch the Clock was so crucial to the development of Costello's career in this country. It wasn't a great collection by any means — if anything, Costello seemed to be slipping into self-conscious wordiness — but the album yielded his first substantial U.S. hit single, "Everyday I Write the Book."
With Goodbye Cruel World, Costello is hoping to prove that that success wasn't a fluke. His album leads off with "The Only Flame in Town," another smooth, medium-tempo tune in the manner of "Everyday I Write the Book," and features a special guest star — Daryl Hall of the Philly soul duo Hall and Oates. Hall and Costello sing plaintively over Costello's pretty melody, and — ta-da! — a would-be hit single is born.
Far from being a cynical commercial sellout, "The Only Flame in Town" is another one of Costello's knotty musings on romance, complete with corny puns ("She's not the only flame in town / She's got to stop thinking that I'm carrying this torch around") and an attractive recurring keyboard figure from Attractions member Steve Nieve.
The rest of Goodbye Cruel World continues this process. The puns pile up — "I've looked into these eyes upon reflection," he croons in "The Comedians" — as do some facile tongue twisters. "Footprints set in sentimental cement," in "The Great Unknown," is a typically cryptic example of the latter.
It's for this sort of thing that Costello has been overesteemed as the new wave Cole Porter. Fans and critics have leapt to acclaim Costello's intricate tune-smithing, apparently forgetting that, early in his career, his best music was characterized by melodies so strong that they overpowered the wordplay. When he was working at his fierce best, as on This Year's Model (1978) and Get Happy!! (1980), Costello got his puns intentionally tangled in his passion, and the result was a series of big, messy, brilliant rock 'n' roll songs that was emotionally complex and involving.
It's hard to be as enthusiastic about Costello these days, if for no other reason than he seems so subdued himself. Goodbye Cruel World climaxes with "Peace in Our Time," a stately protest song about government intervention. It is refreshing to see Costello stooping to insults as immature as "there's already one spaceman in the White House, what do you want another one for" but creamy French horns and his mannerly croon smooth out the commentary until its impact is minimal.
There are comely, likable songs on Goodbye Cruel World — the sly, peppery "Sour Milk-Cow Blues," the gentle, pulsing "Love Field" — but there is no music here as effective as the performances Costello gave on his solo American tour, which stopped locally at the Tower Theater in April. Accompanying himself on guitar and piano, Costello rearranged many of his most familiar songs and gave heartfelt, lively renditions of his best work. It will be interesting to see whether Costello can infuse the same sort of spirit into the show he and the Attractions give on his Goodbye Cruel World promotional tour when it arrives here in August.
Nick Lowe will be Costello's opening act on that tour, and if Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit is any indication, Lowe will be his usual, unpretentious self. Lowe never has evinced the serious, politically-conscious bent that Costello has chosen to emphasize. Instead, Lowe likes to play the clown, creating jokey, old-fashioned rock music.
Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit features a few deft originals — especially the rumbling, silly "Half a Boy and Half a Man" — as well as some well-chosen pop songs such as Mickey Jupp's "You'll Never Get Me up in One of Those Things" and "Love Like a Glove," written by singer Carlene Carter, who just happens to be married to Lowe. Lowe is backed on this record by some of his usual cohorts, including guitarist Martin Belmont and keyboardist Paul Carrack, and the result is a friendly, shaggy-dog album.
But Lowe has been coasting on his friendliness for quite a while now, and unlike Costello, he has never scored that one big American hit that would give his career a boost of energy. As charming as "Half a Boy and Half a Man" is, it doesn't sound like the sort of tune that is going to give Cyndi Lauper and Huey Lewis competition on the radio. Whereas Costello's recent albums would have benefited from a less self-conscious, rougher attack, Lowe's records could stand some tightening up. Everything sprawls with such amiable aimlessness that no dramatic tension is created.
At this point in their careers, Costello and Lowe are opposites who attract — each other, if not a huge audience.
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