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After nearly two months, I'm still not sure what to make of this one. Costello covers some familiar ground: he croons a few, observes caustically on matters political, social, personal and mythical, and even includes some country references.
That said, the record, as its title implies, might be heard as a recapitulation of all that's gone before. If so, Costello has stretched himself too thinly; Goodbye Cruel World doesn't hang together as well as many of the earlier records. (The music doesn't match the words. He rocks out only once. The arrangements take off not from the soul horns of Punch the Clock but the pop grandiosity of Imperial Bedroom.) Then again maybe it isn't, and the record marks another as yet unclear (to me) direction.
I can say that at least six of the songs stand with Costello's best stuff. "Inch By Inch" may be the best seduction/rejection lyric ever written. A good friend and Elvis-watcher reminds me often of an early Elvis quote rejecting an explanation of his music: "I'm more interested in undermining whatever impression people have of me." That he's done.
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