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Elvis Costello hasn't lost his knack for clever poison-pen lyrics, and on Spike he extends his already impressive musical reach. That combination provides an uncommonly strong punch on Costello's first new album in a couple of years.
Spike at first seems excessive: 15 songs performed in nearly a dozen musical styles. But a few listenings and a careful reading of the lyrics show that Costello actually has exercised some restraint.
Sometimes in the past, Costello's wordplay has gotten out of hand, drawing too much attention to itself. But on Spike the great majority of his tricky phrases contribute greatly to whatever barbed point he is trying to make.
"...This Town..." tears into Hollywood: "The little green figures that dance on his screen say everything you want to hear and nothing they mean."
"Let Him Dangle" gives capital punishment a logical jolt: "If killing anybody is a terrible crime, why does this bloodthirsty chorus come round from time to time: Let him dangle."
"God's Comic" takes deadly aim, perhaps at the singer himself: "I wish you'd known me when I was alive."
But the most scathing words pour out on "Tramp the Dirt Down," an unforgiving indictment of Margaret Thatcher.
And now the cynical ones say that it all ends the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just squeezed the life from his only son...
Just like a schoolboy, whose head's like a tin can, filled up with dreams then poured down the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being blown to bits or beaten and maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shame.
I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap
Costello also stretches himself musically, aided by such guests as Roger McGuinn, T Bone Burnett, Paul McCartney, Mitchell Froom and Benmont Tench.
Costello tried styles ranging from smooth, cocktail-lounge balladry to harsh industrial funk. In between those extremes, other songs offer eerie Irish folk sounds, late-period Beatles' psychedelia and the sometimes mellow, sometimes hot tones of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
The only drawbacks to Spike are that Costello's unrelentingly bleak outlook quickly becomes depressing, and that the diverse music makes the album disjointed. But feelings of dread and disorientation probably are just what Costello had in mind, bless his pointed little head.
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