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Well, yes and no. The good news is that Elvis is no longer scared of remix/sampling/post-rap sonics (which, for all I know, is BAD news to you: maybe you'll HATE the tricky new EC, and not find it at all Attractive enough, even if he does quote "Watching The Detectives"). | Well, yes and no. The good news is that Elvis is no longer scared of remix/sampling/post-rap sonics (which, for all I know, is BAD news to you: maybe you'll HATE the tricky new EC, and not find it at all Attractive enough, even if he does quote "Watching The Detectives"). | ||
My initial reaction to the | My initial reaction to the dubby, clicky "When I Was Cruel 2," "Alibi' and "Dust" was, wow-at-long-fucking-last-HELLfire-fucking-BRILLIANT! (Later, I did get to wondering whether they don't just sound good in the context of an Elvis Costello song; whether you couldn't pick up any new Tommy Boy CD or Missy 12-inch and hear stuff a thousand times sharper.) | ||
EC has always had a weird relationship to music as sensual (as opposed to soapbox) thing; and if I had another 5,000 words I might go into the whole vexed question of how (much) this links to his much-trumpeted obsessions with Guilt and Revenge (especially the former, which no one ever wanted to know so much as the sexy, Nick-Kent-kool latter), and thence to his not-so-often discussed Catholic background. | |||
At 65 minutes, ''When I Was Cruel'' is (like nearly every CD released these days) WAY too long; if he was less of the Mr Muso he'd clip off, oh, four or five of the (to be honest, six or seven) by-the-code-book "Elvis Costello" tracks. THEN you would have an LP as coiled, urgent, newsworthy, concise and angry as could be. "When I Was Cruel 2" and "Alibi" are haunting, headbutty, hilarious, the best he has sounded for aeons: like a Psyche trapped inside an Age, not a muso punching his way out of a paper persona. These are punchy, throaty, bloodrush tracks - tanked up, let's-have-a-big-fucking-row tracks - which effortlessly, spitefully, overshadow all the little Spiritualizeds, Radioheads, Starsailors blubbing and boo-hooing out there in Poor Me Land. | |||
Such tracks (and "Tart" and "Dust") are eminently quotable - especially the latter, a kind of 3 am Girls "Desolation Row," from what I can make out - but there is also a whole lot of EC-by-numbers here, with lines like ''"I want a girl to turn my screw / To wind my watch / to buckle my shoe"'' (I don't know how he didn't capsize with shame when he put that last one down). And there's also WAY too much morality-by numbers. Elvis, I'd be careful using the word "whoring" about anyone else's vocation when part of yours is to introduce the despicable Grammies alongside Amanda Holden - bet you were hoping not too many people saw that, eh? Or maybe the opposite with a "new record to plug?" | |||
Too much on WIWC is both pointedly obtuse in an overfamiliar EC way; and lazily ill-considered (''"She had the attention span of warm cellophane"'' just doesn't work as a figure), flash savagery for the sake of a good pun (and just | |||
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{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} |
Revision as of 05:14, 1 November 2014
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