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The words and music of Elvis Costello represent the ideas of a most creative and compelling individual; in his five years of popularity, he has not redefined pop, but rather given it a shot in the arm. While ABBA makes lyrically vapid pop music, and the Cars make great music but write awful lyrics, while REO Speedwagon and Journey invent new ways to sell the same old nothing, Elvis Costello says something. Not something "important," like early Dylan, but something strong, with substance.
He's witty, he's articulate, he's a supreme wordsmith. But there's nothing dull or overly "arty" about Costello — his lyrical insights (which sometimes go painfully inside) are framed with economic melodies, never longer than three and one-half minutes, worthy of a melodic master like Paul McCartney. Like McCartney's best work, Costello's songs can seem dispensable until you find they have entered you like some melodic earwig, and they won't leave you alone. From "Alison" and "Less Than Zero" from Elvis' early days, through nearly a hundred more songs to his masterful new album "Imperial Bedroom," Costello has proved time after time that he is a genuine talent, a songwriter of the highest calibre.
A lot of praise, eh?
Costello's songwriting cannot be underpraised. If you hear the lines —
There's nothing that he can do for you
To shut me away as you walk through
Lovers laughing in their amateur hour
Holding hands in the corridors of power
Even though I'm with somebody else right now
High fidelity, can you hear me?
— you think, new wave, vagueness. Listen to Costello sing these words in a tone tortured yet hopeful. Read the lines again.
And some people thought REO Speedwagon came up with the concept of high infidelity.
Just 28 years old, Elvis Costello (nee Declan MacManus) was born in London, and received his musical initiation in the northern industrial town of Liverpool. He has said that his musical influences —- Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Cole Porter, as well as the Beatles, tended to alienate him from his peers, who fancied Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. Also terribly unpopular with post-Beatles English teenagers was the early Motown music, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles, that MacManus dearly loved. In the early seventies, while he was working at writing his own, admittedly "rather precious... showing-off songs... with a lot of chords," he ran into progressive popsters like Nick Lowe, who taught him that it wasn't uncool to be simple or direct, that he didn't have to be like everyone else.
Everything came tumbling out. Costello's early work was produced at the same time (1977) the punk movement exploded. His songs, simplified from their original form, were more often than not bitter or accusing tirades about life's unfair draw of the cards, or the incomprehensible lack of brains he saw in most women. It was potent stuff — sometimes devastatingly cruel, often hysterically funny, always packaged with an infectious melody. Costello surpassed every punk musician in the world; perhaps his anger was more universal than that of England's frustrated teenagers.
A British reviewer once wrote: "Costello's work captured the rage and the momentum of the best punk music, and (his band) the Attractions played with a kind of ferocity very similar to it, but he allied it to a very incisive lyrical sense, unique to him."
Attack has always been unique to Costello:
They chopped you up in butcher's school
Threw you out of the academy of garbage
You'll be a joker all your life
A student at the comedy college
People pleasing people pleasing people like you
You've been around so long but you still don't know what to do
There are eight Elvis Costello albums. Only one (his country tribute, Almost Blue) is even remotely weak. His rock ("Big Tears," "Radio, Radio,") pop ("Oliver's Army," "Red Shoes,") soul ("Riot Act," "King Horse,") and country ("Stranger in the House," "The Long Honeymoon") can, and most definitely will, stand up against any and all in their field. Like only a handful of artists, like Neil Young, Randy Newman or Bob Dylan, Costello makes records because he has something to say first, not because "some product" is necessary for the fickle record market. Therefore, as it has been noted, it is possible to count all of Elvis Costello's bad songs on one finger.
Costello records don't sell very well in America. Neither do those by Graham Parker, Roxy Music or Talking Heads. Nothing new here — it's just very comforting to know that the records are there in the first place.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions are not a showy group, but this concert experience (Thursday night in the O'Connell Center) will most probably be the most intense show ever to play Gainesville. Costello is brilliant, one of the two brightest stars in today's pop, and his performing here is rare indeed. It should not be missed.
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