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Elvis Costello spent much of the 1980s bouncing back and forth between excellent albums (Trust, Imperial Bedroom, Blood & Chocolate) and passable ones (Goodbye Cruel World, Punch the Clock and Spike).
More streaky than a worn-out windshield wiper, Costello was as inconsistent as the Reagan White House's foreign policy. While every record would have its moments, some plain outperformed the others.
So, what of Mighty Like a Rose, the bespectacled (and currently bearded) one's first album of the decade?
One difficulty in judging a new Costello release is extrapolating how it will age. When Spike was first played, it would have been hard to predict how poorly the eclectic CD would stand the test of time.
By the same token, anybody who'd have guessed King of America would become a Costello classic would probably have been ridiculed five years ago.
Mighty Like a Rose, Costello's 13th studio album, could become the sort of record 1980's Trust was: too often overlooked, but brilliant nevertheless.
While it has not gained the media attention 1989's Spike did, Costello's second album for Warner Brothers far outshines its predecessor.
Indeed, direct comparisons to Trust prove more enlightening than those to Spike. Opening with "The Other Side of Summer," for example, the CD sets out on a musically assured note reminiscent of the defiance of "Clubland" (both Trust's opener and first single).
The song's and album's first lines — "The sun struggles up another beautiful day / And I feel glad in my own suspicious way / Despite the contradictions and confusion/ Felt tragic without reason / There's malice and there's magic in every season" — are pure Costello. With angst in his heart and trouble on his mind, the singer sets the tone for another emotional roller-coaster ride.
That even a dig at John Lennon ("Was it a millionaire who said 'imagine no posessions?'") comes as a shock is a testament to both the song's lyricism and cynicism. (Its additional addictive and energetic qualities need, now that it's receiving airplay, no further comment.)
The next cut on Mighty Like a Rose, "Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)" is to the CD what "Lovers Walk" was to Trust. A throbbing, mashing monster of a track, it's not the release's strongest number, but it's hard to overlook.
With Nick Lowe on bass, "Doomsday" also marks the fact that Rose is not another Attractions album. With members of Costello's on-again, off-again backing band on the occasional cut, the record sometimes plays instead like a "Who's Who" of the singer's past.
But unlike Spike, Rose doesn't let the variation get in the way of the theme, or the guest artists overwhelm the host.
Two songs on Rose co-written by Paul McCartney (the blinding "Playboy to a Man" and the haunting "So Like Candy") differ from the pair in Spike in that neither reek of the ex-Beatle's sappier moments. Yet both are sufficiently different from Costello solo efforts to be fresh and invigorating.
In fact, the only song that stands out like a sore thumb from the melange of the whole is wife Cait O'Riordan's "Broken," a U2-esque dirge (circa The Joshua Tree) that — one suspects — Costello would never have written in a million years.
On the other hand, like the few other moments when Mighty Like A Rose is at its weakest, "Broken" is followed by a spark of genius: the album's last track, "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4."
The song itself is perhaps the most poignant one Costello has cut since "Alison." Certainly it's the CD's most moving moment — a bittersweet, calliope-driven ballad, "Unexpected" is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful.
Opening (for once) with a girl "who'd found her consolation," the song shifts gears to the portrait of her father above her head, "the wilted favor that he gave her still fastened to the frame / They've got his bones and everything he owns / I've got his name."
Fear, death and denial haunt the entire album as anger and infidelity did on earlier records (This Year's Model, Imperial Bedroom, etc.). Even the bright pop of "Georgie And Her Rival," like that of "The Other Side of Summer," contains a caustic booby trap in the lyrical innocence it initially assumes.
The key to Costello's mind on Mighty Like A Rose may not be its first line, but its last: "Please don't let me fear anything I cannot explain / I can't believe I'll never believe in anything again."
If the album had been released in the 1980s, it would have been marked as one of Costello's finest of the decade.
As it is, Mighty Like A Rose sets the standard for the next 10 years.
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