Florence Times Daily, February 11, 1989: Difference between revisions
(start page) |
(+browser) |
||
(6 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
{{:Bibliography index}} | {{:Bibliography index}} | ||
{{:Florence Times Daily index}} | {{:Florence Times Daily index}} | ||
{{: | {{:Alabama publications index}} | ||
{{:US publications by state index}} | |||
{{Bibliography article header}} | {{Bibliography article header}} | ||
<center><h3> Costello's new album diverse </h3></center> | <center><h3> Costello's new album diverse </h3></center> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
<center> Stephen Holden / | <center> Stephen Holden / New York Times </center> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
New York — Elvis Costello's excellent new album, ''Spike'' (Warner Brothers) may be the most stylistically diverse collection of songs in the prolific English singer and composer's 12-year recording career. | |||
The record, which marks his debut on Warner Brothers Records after a decade-long sojourn on Columbia, has the kind of freewheeling eclecticism in its arrangements that characterized the mature Beatles. | |||
The instrumentation ranges from Irish traditional to brass band, and Mr. Costello's songs touch even more bases than his 1982 tour de force, ''Imperial Bedroom.'' | |||
The album's Beatlesque flavor is underscored by two songs — "Veronica" and "Pads, Paws and Claws" — written by Mr. Costello and Paul McCartney. | |||
The two are among 11 songs they wrote together last year. More of their collaborations are expected to be unveiled on Mr. McCartney's next solo album. | |||
The unlikely teaming of Mr. Costello, whose musical image is that of a sarcastic misanthrope, with Mr. McCartney, whose songs usually radiate sweetness and light, has proved artistically fruitful. | |||
"Veronica," the album's first single, examines the life of a woman who has retreated to a private world of memories in an old-age home. | |||
In a telephone interview from London last week, Mr. Costello described "Veronica" as "a wishful, hopeful song about there being a place in the mind we can go when it appears all is lost." | |||
The collaboration, in which the two men shared equally in the music and lyrics, was a process Mr. Costello described as "a musical Ping-Pong match." | |||
"It was a workshop situation," Mr. Costello said. "We would sit around with a couple of guitars, a piano and a tape recorder and throw around ideas, improvising until we got a structure. Generally, if it sounds as though I wrote something, Paul wrote it, and if it sounds as though Paul wrote it, I did." | |||
One of the album's most arresting songs, "Tramp the Dirt Down," is an outspoken denunciation of Britain's Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher; an eerily beautiful melody bears a message of towering contempt. Mr. Costello's lyric labels England "the whore of the world" and Mrs. Thatcher "her madam." | |||
The album's finest song may be "God's Comic," the saga of a third-rate music-hall performer who dies and goes to heaven. | |||
The protagonist, who used to impersonate a drunken priest on the stage, is terrified of confronting God. But when he finally meets his Maker, God is sitting on a waterbed sipping cola, reading a paperback and listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber's ''Requiem''. | |||
God tells him, "I've been wading through all this unbelievable junk and wondering if I should have given the world to the monkeys." | |||
"I didn't know whether to spell it 'monkeys' or 'Monkees'," Mr. Costello said, laughing. "I even considered working in an allusion to 'Last Train to Clarksville.'" | |||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
Line 16: | Line 45: | ||
{{Bibliography notes}} | {{Bibliography notes}} | ||
{{Bibliography next | |||
|prev = Florence Times Daily, November 29, 1986 | |||
|next = Florence Times Daily, May 11, 1989 | |||
}} | |||
'''Florence Times Daily, February 11, 1989 | '''Florence Times Daily, February 11, 1989 | ||
---- | ---- | ||
Line 35: | Line 68: | ||
*[http://www.timesdaily.com/ TimesDaily.com ] | *[http://www.timesdaily.com/ TimesDaily.com ] | ||
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TimesDaily Wikipedia: TimesDaily] | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TimesDaily Wikipedia: TimesDaily] | ||
*[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19890211&id=LFgeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qMcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1107,1189748 news.google.com] | |||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Florence Times Daily 1989-02-11}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:Florence Times Daily 1989-02-11}} |
Latest revision as of 15:07, 18 August 2023
|