Columbia Daily Spectator, July 14, 1982

Bibliography   72 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 UK & Ireland weeklies UK & Ireland magazines UK & Ireland newspapers US newspapers US rock magazines US music magazines US magazines US alternative weeklies European magazines European newspapers Canada  •  Mexico  •  Asia Australia  •  New Zealand South America  •  Africa Blogs  •  Fanzines  •  Books Online publications Newspapers   The Australian Belgium Soir Berliner Zeitung Cleveland Scene Columbus Dispatch Connecticut Post Correio da Manhã Corriere della Sera Le Figaro Financial Times Gazeta Wyborcza Hamburger Abendblatt Irish Examiner Irish Independent Irish Press Irish Times Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger Liverpool Echo London Daily Mail London Evening Standard London Guardian London Independent London Observer London Telegraph London Times Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Louisville Courier-Journal Mail & Guardian Marin Independent Journal Mail Tribune Melbourne Age El Mundo Neue Zürcher Zeitung New Zealand Herald Otago Daily Times El Pais Philadelphia Inquirer Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh Tribune-Review La Presse Providence Journal Radikal Reading Eagle la Repubblica Satakunnan Kansa South China Morning Post Der Spiegel La Stampa Der Standard St. Petersburg Independent St. Petersburg Times Süddeutschen Zeitung Svenska Dagbladet Trondheim Adresseavisen Trouw De Volkskrant La Voz de Galicia Wanganui Herald Wiener Zeitung Die Zeit — Elvis sings for neurotic lovers only Tom Meltzer Elvis Costello is a special kind of romantic—constantly trying to reconcile his vision of ideal love with the reality of day-to-day relationships, he's produced a series of anxious, exhilarating records, any of which could be sub-titled For Neurotic Lovers Only. The new record, Imperial Bedroom is a novel Costello album because, unlike the ironically titled Get Happy and Trust, it offers a relatively optimistic vision of romance. But that's not saying a whole lot, considering the bleak outlook of Elvis' earlier songs. In other words, he has yet to write anything like "Surfer Girl;" on the other hand, nothing on Imperial Bedroom is as cynical as "Lip Service." The glimmers of hope on this album show that Elvis is moving towards a more comprehensive vision of love. No longer bitterly pessimistic, he sings "When will you realize / There are 10 commandments of love?," and means it. There's not a hint of cynicism as Elvis declares, "P.P.S. I L-O-V-E / I love you" in "The Loved Ones." There are even a few tracks that approach being love songs. "Almost Blue" and "Human Hands" are Elvis's admissions that romance can result in something other than anger. None of this means that Costello is becoming complacent as he gets older. He still acknowledges brutal reality in the form of: bullies ("The Loved Ones"), the unfaithful ("The Long Honeymoon"), and the manipulative ("Tears Before Bedtime"). There are some characteristic Costello sneers — "He wants to be a fancy man / but he's nothing but a nancy-boy / he's all pride and no joy." Yet even in his attacks. Elvis has grown away from his early, angry young man stance. He is now capable of expressing his anger without condemning the entire human race. And he's capable of expressing more than anger. Since Dylan was "born-again," Costello is the only lyricist whose songs have been much fun to decipher. Costello put the fun back into decoding, claiming the crown Dylan abdicated when his lyrics got embarrassingly direct around "You Gotta Serve Somebody." On his first five albums, Costello mumbled double entendres making it difficult if not impossible to figure out just what the hell he was trying to say (just like Dylan). On the new album Elvis has kindly cut the difficulty of deciphering Costello-speak in half. For the first time one of his albums comes with a lyric sheet (FLASH! Hell found frozen over!). Costello, however, has never been one to make life easy on his fans, so the lyrics are printed with no punctuation with each song running into the next. By mastering the difficult lyric sheet, however, the devoted can get on with the task of finding the hidden message. But this is still a Costello album. Obscurity abounds. "What's going on behind the green elevator door," "She's going to cop a packet if he ever finds her in between the sheets" — life hasn't been so much fun for the hardy few who actually listen to rock lyrics since Dylan's astonishing "The comic book and me — just us — we caught the bus." Like the pre-Christian Dylan, Costello revels in word play while aspiring to make some profound statements about love. Like Dylan, he often manages to get away with both. On Imperial Bedroom Elvis has revealed the tenderness under the bitter wit, the romance doesn't suffer at the expense of the puns. I wake up in the morning / There's frogs inside my socks / The mailman he's hiding behind the icebox / your mother she's wearing a Napoleon Bonaparte mask. Columbia Daily Spectator, November 16, 1981 Tom Meltzer reviews Imperial Bedroom. Images File:1982-07-14 Columbia Daily Spectator page 04-05.jpg File:1982-07-14 Columbia Daily Spectator clipping.jpg Gatefold and clipping. Photo by Ed Keating.

External links

• Columbia.edu
• Columbia.edu