Sounds, June 11, 1977

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Sounds

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Elvis today, tomorrow ...?


Chas De Whalley

Elvis Costello / My Aim Is True
5 stars (out of 5) reviews5 stars (out of 5) reviews5 stars (out of 5) reviews5 stars (out of 5) reviews5 stars (out of 5) reviews

Elvis Costello is a cagey sort of fellow. You can talk to him for hours and still not discover quite what makes him tick.

The same thing is true about his songs. There are eleven of them here on My Aim Is True and although I've listened to them at least seven times now, I still don't feel I've worked out what's going on. I normally expect to get to grips with even difficult albums after about three spins, but every time I put My Aim Is True onto the turntable I hear something else that wasn't there before. Like a flower Elvis' debut album is opening up into something of metallic beauty.

With Nick Lowe at the mixing desk, Elvis sings a set of semi-autobiographical riddles and rhymes that refuse to be tied down. Behind his harsh whining voice, there crashes a bright beat group guitar and a hissing cymbal. His tunes and arrangements plunder the jukeboxes of Pirate radio youth. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that he bears some resemblance to the likes of Graham Parker and Bruce Springsteen.

He's not without pretensions though. Just look at the front cover of My Aim Is True and that Duane Eddie pose of a Fifties guitar hero!

But look at the back and you'll find another image completely... our boy as a mutant midget with a guitar bigger than his body looking pensive and distraught. So which is the real Elvis Costello, the super-hero or the man crippled inside?

As a lyric writer Costello is frequently a little on the verbose side. Imaginative, almost literary at times, he sings of intensely personal problems and views them in fine focus under a hard white light. Mostly he sings about women, but throughout the album Elvis strives to find an emotional identity as an individual and not a mere social stereotype.

In "Miracle Man," for instance, he compares himself with the lover who "can do it better than I can" and pleads humanity in his own defence. The Merseybeat "No Dancing" sits right in at the break-up of a fierce love affair, with Elvis viewing himself in a neurotic third person as if on a movie screen. The idea of life as a cinema crops up again, explicitly this time, in the eerie "I'm Not Angry" with its edgy Blue Oyster Cult riff and a strangely sumptuous production. Like the slow, sad ballad "Alison" (Elvis' current single and surely destined for the charts) "I'm Not Angry" is the tale of a man cruelly confronted with his lover's infidelity.

But while every separate song scenario is highly charged with emotion Elvis Costello is not above a laugh occasionally. A self-deprecatory sarcasm colours "Welcome To My Working Week" while the doomy and Dylany "Waiting For The End Of The World" is a strip cartoon peopled with weird, surrealist characters and scripted with a fatalistic black humour.

If you want to hear Elvis Costello at his wittiest though, you should seek out "Mystery Dance" on side two. A spoof Fifties rocker, with Elvis camping up his namesake, "Mystery Dance" examines the tender and traumatic problem of a teenager's first screw. The sheer ludicrousness of the situation is brilliantly exaggerated but the pathos is never sacrificed for the obvious cheap laugh.

Elvis Costello is a songwriter of rare sensitivity and talent.

He is backed by a fine band too. The individual musicians go uncredited unfortunately. Guitar freaks should check 'em out too for whoever plays the stylish Amos Garrett influenced fills on "Alison" and the Steely Dan lead lines on "Blame It On Cain" and "Sneaky Feelings" is obviously star quality.

But he's only the icing on the cake. Elvis Costello is the King. Or at least that's what you'll find scratched onto the middle of My Aim Is True. I think it's true.


Tags:  My Aim Is TrueNick LoweMiracle ManNo DancingAlisonI'm Not AngryWelcome To The Working WeekWaiting For The End Of The WorldMystery DanceBlame It On CainSneaky FeelingsSteely DanGraham ParkerBruce SpringsteenThe MerseybeatsBob DylanElvis Is KingA Bunch Of Stiff RecordsLess Than ZeroJake RivieraStiff RecordsBlondieThe Damned

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Sounds, June 11, 1977


Chas de Whalley reviews My Aim Is True.


Jake Riviera replies to an earlier letter about A Bunch Of Stiff Records.

Images

1977-06-11 Sounds page 33 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.


Stiff response


Jake Riviera

1977-06-11 Sounds clipping 02.jpg

I read with interest David Brown's letter in Sounds and was flattered that he considers us the leading New Wave record label. It surprises me that David considers A Bunch Of Stiffs a sampler album and compares it to Rock Machine Turns You On issued by CBS and Nice Enough To Eat issued by Island both several years ago.

Both these albums were compilations of material available on other albums by their respective companies. A Bunch Of Stiffs has only one track previously issued which is "Less Than Zero" by Elvis Costello, and aficionados of hi-fi will notice that this is a different mix from the single.

I personally resent the inference that David Brown thinks we are profiteering, seeing as how the small record companies in the UK have already changed the mentality of the dinosaur majors, and I watch my ideas being ripped off weekly.

It was Chiswick/ Skydog/ Dynamite/ Stiff/ Many Others that reactivated picture sleeves for singles. It was Stiff Records that gave away 250 Blondie singles on Private Stock with every two Stiffs ordered, for no other reason than that we dug the record and were amazed that Private Stock UK did not see fit to issue it.

It is Stiff Records that is giving away 5,000 free singles on the Damned's first anniversary to humble punters like yourself. We could probably obtain more press and radio exposure by spending the £1,500 it is costing ourselves and the Damned to make the record on some lavish nosh up in a chic bistro in Chelsea for the media people instead — but, above all, the thing that concerns me most is that David Brown has the mentality of a person who would buy his second favourite single of the week rather than his favourite because it lasts 40 seconds longer and he is therefore getting "better value for money." It is the quality, not the length that counts David, if you don't like it, don't buy it. As it is patently obvious that A Bunch Of Stiffs is a compilation album and not a sampler, why did David invest the £3.16 in the first place, and what did he think of the music, of which he makes no mention in his letter?

I would be more than willing to refund his full purchase price if he would care to send the album to my Argentinian retreat. For, after all, Stiff Records is not only your national record company, but your local butcher.

— Jake Riviera, Stiff Records.


Cover and page scan.
1977-06-11 Sounds cover.jpg 1977-06-11 Sounds page 33.jpg

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