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Everything about Elvis Costello's new album Armed Forces suggests that this British New Wave rocker is sailing straight into the mainstream, leaving his fellows far upstream. Armed Forces is Costello's most commercial venture to date, but from the standpoint of musical craftsmanship it is also his finest.
A far remove from the spare rock-and-roll of his first LP, My Aim Is True, Armed Forces is still rock and roll, but it has a glossy, poppy surface that recalls the Beatles. While remaining within the confines of the standard verse-chorus-bridge song form, Costello has transcended these limitations with a lyricism and inventiveness all his own.
While retaining the immediate musical idiom of This Year's Model, he has regained the vocal control and subtle expressiveness that was painfully absent on that LP.
Nick Lowe's flexible production approach accents the varying moods of these songs, "Oliver's Army" fairly bounces with a bright, lucid sound, while "Chemistry Class" smolders ominously in a dense, Phil Spector-like wall of sound.
Such details, however, are only the surface of what is a complex and multi-layered record. Costello is probably the best rock lyricist writing today and one of the top five in rock history.
He has been compared to Bob Dylan, but Elvis' work has little in common with the surrealistic imagery of most of Dylan's best songs. While occasionally obscure, Costello's themes are generally divinable from a comprehension of the song or album in its entirety, whereas in Dylan's case it is often a single line that will prompt one's understanding of the entire song.
In fact, Armed Forces has but a single theme — the caption "Emotional Fascism" printed on the inner sleeve. In exploring that single theme, Costello's lyrics show a maturity and focus that is virtually nonexistent in popular music.
The theme "emotional fascism" is illustrated by a perverse but convincing relationship Costello draws between sex and politics — a mad narcissism that permeates modern man's appetite for sexual and political gratification.
Most of the songs deal exclusively with sex or politics, but several numbers combine these concerns in a manner both clever and compelling. Replete with images of paranoia and sadism, "Green Shirt" is a nightmarish evocation of the singer's burdening of a sexual encounter with overtones of treason and espionage. "You tease and you flirt; And you shine all the buttons on your green shirt. You can please yourself but somebody's gonna get it."
"Accidents Will Happen," the opening cut, is what one writer called a "stinging rock and roll ballad of socio-sexual guilt." One of the most profound and disturbing songs Costello has written, it is laden with the guilt one feels when unable to affect the course of events and with wondering if it is not his fault for lacking that power. "Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone," and in the next verse "Your mouth is made up but your mind is undone."
"Chemistry Class," with an obsessive tapping rhythm and smoky sound, is one of the most powerfully erotic songs in recent memory, but the sexual release is a harbinger of apocalypse: "Are you ready for the final solution?" Musically and lyrically, "Chemistry Class" is one of the highlights of the LP. Costello masterfully overlays the instrumental rhythms with a sinuous, sotto voce delivery.
This gratification of sexual desire and guest for political power inevitably lead to destruction and dehumanization. In "Party Girl," Elvis advises a prospective lover, "I can give you anything but time," while the sweet seductiveness of the music denies any mercenary intent. The loping bass line is one of Armed Forces finest musical touches.
In one of the hardest rockers, "Goon Squad," a new recruit laments to his parents: "Mother, Father, I'm here in the zoo. I can't come home 'cause I've grown up too soon."
References to Nazism occur several times — in the line from "Chemistry Class" quoted above, in "Senior Service" (the initials read S.S.), and in "Two Little Hitlers." Armed Forces ends on a hopeful, albeit desperate note, with Nick Lowe's "(What's so Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding." Costello's tough vocal delivery indicates that there's nothing effete or gentle 'bout them either.
Like most rock lyricists, Costello has an away with such verbal tricks; the pun on the "final solution" is a stroke of genius.
An EP, Elvis Costello live at the Hollywood High, will be included in he first several thousand copies of Armed Forces. The renditions of "Alison" and "Watching the Detectives" recorded affinity with cleverness for its own sake. For example, the basic conceit of "Chemistry Class" is a bit jejune: "You got a chemistry class, I want a piece of your mind. You don't know what you started when you mixed it up with mine." But as usual, Costello is able to get here add nothing to the studio versions on My Aim Is True, but "Accidents Will Happen," with a haunting solo piano accompaniment, is more effective than the studio cut.
In spite of his caustic lyrics, Costello has written music that is melodious and commercial. The Attractions, Costello's backing band, play with control and precision. Elvis apparently believes there is no contradiction in writing nasty lyrics and pretty music, and through his perverse but considerable intelligence he avoids any suggestion of a sellout.
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