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I remember clearly the first time I heard Elvis Costello, in late 1977. I was sitting in my apartment. The radio was on and I was reading the paper, not really listening.
Then a song came on that grabbed my ears and my attention. It was a burst of Jumping, frenetic rock: "Welcome to the Working Week," a minute and 57 seconds that injected vitality into what had been a dreary afternoon of soft rock.
When the disc jockey identified the singer as Elvis Costello, I made a note to myself to get his album. It was one of those moments that sticks with you, when you're exposed to an artist whose energy, talent and vision are immediately apparent.
In the midst of the raw, self-destructive punk movement that died so quickly that year, here was a man with an idea that combined the best of the old and the new.
Costello has yet to let his fans down. Each of his three albums has been better than the last; as a friend of mine put it, "He's one of those people whose album I'll buy without hearing it first."
Linda Ronstadt, who has recorded four of his songs, said in her Playboy interview that Costello is writing the best new material in rock today. Punk rock has come and gone but Elvis Costello has persevered.
He's still hitting the mark with his fourth album, recently released, entitled "Get Happy!!" (Columbia JC 36347).
This album is a Costello bonanza: 20 new songs (of which 18 are Costello originals), only four of which run longer than two-and-a-half minutes. With his band, The Attractions, Costello has created tunes that bite, snarl and snap.
The variety of musical styles is impressive. Costello can handle a bouncing Memphis soul-tune ("I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down"), shift gears into a menacing reggae ("Human Touch"), then slide into a shimmering waltz ("New Amsterdam").
In between, he offers driving, savage tunes filled with clever wordplay. In "Motel Matches," he offers images of both cheapness and indiscretion when he describes his lover's fickleness in two brief, telling lines: "Falling out of your pocketbook. Giving you away like motel matches."
His other images arc equally pungent. In "B Movie," he sings "Everyone is on the make. It's not your heart I'd like to break."
Nick Lowe's production is crisp and varied. Yet Lowe tends to bury Costello's vocals in the mix.
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