|
With his new album, single and video inching up the charts, Elvis Costello is reaching into a more diverse audience than ever before.
Goodbye Cruel World, the newest LP from Elvis and the Attractions, is an unusual album lacking the aggressive, even hostile image that marks Costello's early albums. The majority of the thirteen songs are toned down to softly embrace the listener, while the lyrics seem repeatingly soppy, even occasionally corny.
The single, "The Only Flame in Town" opens the album, and sets the mood of Goodbye Cruel World very quickly. There is an everpresent feeling of melancholy as Elvis sings, "Thought I saw your face in the fire / but it's so hard to remember / even an inferno can cool down to an ember / now you're not the only flame in town."
Costello plays the victim of love once again on "Home Truth," and "Inch by Inch" and "Love Field" are both tracks with equally gentle, if not seductive lyrics.
Side two opens with "I Wanna Be Loved," a song too soppy to be good, as it goes overboard with lines that drip like syrup. "The Comedians" tells of the regrets of being caught in the wrong social circle... "I should he drinking a toast to absent friends / Instead of these comedians."
"Sour Milk-Cow Blues" and "The Deportees Club" are classic rockers in the traditional late seventies Costello style, and deserve notable commendations. The final track is a great waltz-like ballad entitled "Peace In Our Time." This song is politically oriented, and even slaps the President in the face.
As a whole, Goodbye Cruel World comes across rather well. Costello's voice is at its best yet, and the music holds up, mellow though it is. Though it is not the best Elvis Costello and the Attractions, it is indeed refreshing to see a change in pace from the usual over-aggressive albums released in the past.
| 
