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Elvis Costello hasn't legitimately rocked like this since the '80s.
With the latest album from the Liverpudian-born Declan McManus, When I was Cruel (Island), songs no longer sound like a product of an aging and happily married musician previously residing with Paul Westerburg (ex-Replacements) and Van Morrison (ex-Them) in the most literally labeled category of post-rock.
Starting in the mid-80s, such albums as The Juliet Letters, Mighty Like a Rose, and the Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted From Memory showed that the music was aging with the man. When our parents sold their Clash vinyl, they bought these CDs.
But it wasn't always like this — for every insurance agent listening to Painted From Memory in an SUV, there are rusty college-kid cars still blaring This Year's Model from rolled-down windows and finding it just as relevant as it was in 1978.
Elvis Costello first donned his trademark Buddy Holly glasses and skinny ties after being adopted by the punk/new wave trend-setters because of 1977's My Aim Is True — a surprising feat for an album that, besides singles "Less Than Zero" and "Watching the Detectives," was primarily a pub-rock album recorded in "sick days" from his job as a married, working-stiff computer operator.
Although the studio band, the Clovers (fronted by the then-obscure and thankfully absent Huey Lewis), and the album are pretty far from sounding like the Pistols or the Buzzcocks, Costello's qualifying disillusionment was undoubtedly present.
After assembling the permanent backing band, the Attractions, the jaded outlook began to match the music. The following works with the Attractions — This Year's Model, Armed Forces, Get Happy!, and Trust — are champagne and amphetamine rock albums laced with sneering, über-literate lyrics and a bleak and blurred outlook. These are the high points of Elvis Costello as a rocker, and the ones that get no play in our parents' Volvos and station wagons.
Now joined by Attractions' Pete Thomas (on drums) and Steve Nieve (keyboards,) as well as ex-Cracker bassist Davey Faragher, When I was Cruel picks up somewhere around 1982.
Unlike the unwitting self-parody of U2's last album, the reformed Slaughter and the Dogs, and everything the Stones have put out for approximately 20 years. when Costello stomps on the fuzz-box on this album, he's not just trying to rope the kids back into the demographic.
The lyrics are angry, edgy, and spit out, the bass lines are often dub-borrowed and always rumbling, while the guitars are fuzzed and clanging, but most importantly, Costello just seems to mean it.
"45," "When I was Cruel No. 2," and "Radio Silence" are a cycle of self-reflexive musings on the propensity for aging rockers to be ridiculous.
The beginning of the thematic arc, "45" starts the album off with the recollections of Costello's childhood collecting seven-inch singles ("stacks of vinyl and shellac") and then, starting as a 20-something rocker. finding himself on the other side of the racket.
Costello looks back on this resentfully with "When I was Cruel, No. 2," and in the final track of When I was Cruel, updates "Radio, Radio' with the resignation and flickering guitars of "Radio Silence." Whereas "Radio, Radio" is Costello annoyed with radio ignoring good music, "Radio Silence" accepts that mainstream radio is doomed to always be horrible and wants no part of it.
In between "45" and "Radio Silence" are such standouts as "15 Petals," "Daddy Can I Turn This?," and first single, 'Tear Off Your Own Head" — some of the best rock songs Elvis Costello has written in the last 20 years.
Familiar motifs are also brought out of pre-PM Major hiatus. "Spooky Girlfriend" picks up where "Lipstick Vogue," "This Year's Model," and "Party Girl" left off — with Elvis still finding that doomed romanticism in the flashbulbs and evening-gown glamour of the wrong girl.
While these familiar themes are revisited and old sounds and attitudes touched upon, When I was Cruel shouldn't be taken as a rehash, a self-parody, or a generational sell-out from a guy only listened to by parents.
When I Was Cruel should be appreciated, filed right next to This Year's Model or Armed Forces, or maybe just left on repeat in the player.
And who knows? Maybe we'll have to wait another 20 years for Elvis to rock again.
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