Stereo Review, June 1980

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Stereo Review

US music magazines

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Contrived Costello


Noel Coppage

Elvis Costello And The Attractions
Get Happy!!

"I don't know why you can't see that he is only the imposter," Elvis Costello sings (possibly about himself) in his latest, Get Happy!! A bit later, after burying some words under the instruments, he adds: "When I said I was lying, I might have been lying."

Could be. Get Happy!! does seem intent on chasing you around in circles. Producer Nick Lowe talks in the liner notes about the "extra music time" you're getting; the album does contain twenty pieces, but it turns out that only four run longer than 2½ minutes. In all, there are 38½ minutes of music, more than most pop albums contain but not all that much more, and less than you'll find on some. Then there's the gamesmanship about which side is which: what's listed as side one on the jacket is side two on the label, and vice versa. The cover has such a cheap, gaudy, ultra-simple, instant-remainder-bin look to it that you know it took some planning, and the music has a similarly contrived offhandedness.

Superficially, some of it might be taken as a passing nod to rhythm-and-blues. Everybody else with Establishment approval is dabbling in r-&-b, it seems, preparing a listener's mind-set. This one leaves the impression that it was consistently rhythmic at the expense of other elements, rhythmic to the point of being choppy, and that a lot of it was wrapped in Booker T-style organ lines. And there is a cover of a Sam and Dave tune, "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down," in there (the only other one Costello didn't write is "I Stand Accused," and it goes back to the Merseybeats), and Elvis is caught a few times (check out "Riot Act") seemingly trying on a "soul" voice.

But those are merely trappings. In fact, the core of the thing is a decidedly white kind of play on language. What it sounds more like than anything else to me is middle-period, full-tilt-glitter David Bowie with echoes of Costello's stylistic antecedent, Buddy Holly. Costello and the Attractions don't sound much like Holly and the Crickets, but the shift here from their usual somewhat grandiose approach to the realm of wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am does bring Elvis' horn-rim glasses, narrow ties, and peg pants into sharper focus, and so does the subject matter. Like Holly's, it doesn't attempt much beyond straightening out high-school romance. Holly wrote bubblegum before we had the term, and Costello's written some now that we've dropped it.

Costello infests his with puns and one-liners, and occasionally he and Lowe deign to part the instrumentation so you can hear them. Often, like the album cover, they turn out to be deliberately unsophisticated (the riot act, for example, is merely what his girl friend is going to read to him). "New Amsterdam" presents a geographical problem both figuratively and literally: it was the former name of New York City, but, on the other hand, the album was recorded in Holland. The song's zingiest lines are the fairly reined-in "I step on the brake to get out of her clutches" and "I talk double-Dutch to a real double duchess" (there is no double-Dutch in Old Amsterdam, of course, as anyone from P.S. 101 could tell you). In some ways it is like a hickory nut; the shell is hard to crack, and, once you get inside, the kernel is smaller and more commonplace than you expected.

There is also less to the presentation than there's made out to be. Costello's vocals do contain emotionalism, almost an over-wrought sound a couple of times, but not all that much actual passion. This, I think, is why I am reminded of Bowie. The main difference in how Costello sounds, from one song or vignette to another, seems to depend on how loudly he's singing; when he quiets down you hear more texture and nuance. I think he sings with some abandon in "Motel Matches," which is head and shoulders above everything else on the record, but most of the other stuff seems to be acted — which seems somehow to go with so many of the pieces being taken at the same tempo. Lowe's production is unfussy, but the sound varies from clear to somewhat tinny around the vocals. In keeping with the tail-chasing nature of the project, I can't tell whether that's from doctoring or neglect.


What I think happened was that Costello and Lowe saw the "danger" of becoming too smooth for the latest thing in Now, which seems to want much wilder, woolier, more primitive New Wave antics than Yesterday would have dreamed, and they've gone out of their way to roughen up their edges. New Wave is now in demand on the dance floor, which means the fashions that go with it have to be increasingly outrageous in order to top themselves. A would-be point rider has to move fast to stay ahead of the increasingly commercial herd that's building up behind. Costello's energy and verve are not exactly compromised in Get Happy!!, but they are too often subverted to contrivances.

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Stereo Review, June 1980


Noel Coppage reviews Get Happy!!.

Images

1980-06-00 Stereo Review page 86 clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.


Photo by Barry Schultz.
1980-06-00 Stereo Review photo 01 bs.jpg


Cover and page scans.
1980-06-00 Stereo Review cover.jpg 1980-06-00 Stereo Review page 03.jpg 1980-06-00 Stereo Review page 86.jpg

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