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"The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools
Tryin' to anesthetize the way that you feel"
Thus spake Elvis Costello, the mad prophet of rock, and the Philistines shook their fists from behind the cameras of NBC's Saturday Night. Now Elvis has a new album — Armed Forces — and in it he shows that he intends to continue his assault on effete popular music, even (or especially) if he doesn't get played on the radio except as bastardized by Linda Ronstadt.
Both the strength and the limitation of rock music is its sustained beat. For pure music rock cannot compete with jazz or classical; rhythmic variation is too important a tool of musical expression, and for some reason few rock artists seem to know how to use the other musical elements, either. Nevertheless, the repetitious rock format does lend itself uniquely well to two primitive themes: sex and violence.
Armed Forces is about being betrayed or disappointed and not taking it calmly. Although Elvis Costello is pessimistic, he hasn't lost his idealism and he hasn't fallen into self-pity — he wants to hit back. The moral validity of this attitude is doubtful; however, it does make for great rock music because it is exactly the right attitude for the medium.
At first the instrumentation sounds conventional, maybe dull — drums, bass guitars and piano running along in mainstream '60's fashion — but on top lies a thin, ironic patina of fruity synthesizer; and against this smooth electronic fabric is juxtaposed Elvis' voice, which is shockingly jagged and anguished. The contrast is very effective and, anyway, Elvis Costello is (white socks notwithstanding) one of the great rock singers.
And what is more, he writes lyrics worth singing. Elvis operates mostly within one of the traditional realms of satire: the cliche. Armed Forces twists cliches in an attempt to expose the true rottenness at the heart of the banal. In "Senior Service" Elvis sings, "It's the death that's worse than fate." In "Accidents Will Happen," he sings, "Your mouth is made up but your mind is undone" and then reverses the nouns. Sometimes he is merely cute, but when he complains to the "Party Girl" that she's got him "in a grip-like vice," there's really something going on. (Puns, incidentally, are not necessarily the lowest form of humor.)
Elvis' chief musical gift aside from a good general sense of form — the first words of the album are "I just don't know where to begin" — is his feel for dynamics. "Green Shirt" is an experiment with instruments fading in and out beneath the vocals, and most of his other songs contain interesting undulations of volume and texture. Elvis also knows how to fit the music to his lyrics. "Senior Service" contains a long phrase sung on two notes until the end, when it suddenly drops down the scale — the lyrics are, "I want to chop off your head and see it roll into the basket."
Probably the best song on Armed Forces is "Two Little Hitlers," a reggae number about ego conflicts with the delightful chorus:
"Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one's will
I will return, I will not burn"
The album has its weak points. Certain songs are just too commonplace from a musical point of view; "Chemistry Class," for example, is memorable only for the aborted couplet:
"You got a chemistry class,
I want a piece of your mind."
Yet "Chemistry Class" is sandwiched between "Two Little Hitlers" and another great song, "Moods for Moderns," which could only be described as effervescent if the word didn't connote SMU coeds.
I would not recommend Armed Forces before either of Elvis' first two records, but (to speak extravagantly) anybody who likes rock music — that is, sex and violence — should really own all three of them. Elvis Costello belongs to the (possibly less than a) handful of rock artists whose music conveys any kind of sincere emotion.
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