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Elvis Costello is cramming the grooves again, following a nearly two-year hiatus. Costello and producer Nick Lowe have maximized the time and space in their latest offering, Get Happy!! The album is both an engineering feat and a musical success.
According to Lowe, the new LP is a real long player. Each side of the record contains 10 two- to three-minute selections. This is achieved through a production technique unheard of since the mid-1960s. Unlike earlier attempts, Get Happy!! suffers no sound loss from the 20-tune "groove cramming."
If that's not enough to make you happy, the tunes will suffice. Costello and the Attractions work with some of their familiar hooks as well as creating newer timings and shadings. Whatever you enjoyed about Costello before, you're bound to discover again.
"Secondary Motion" bears enjoyable resemblance to Costello's earlier works. This is a lulling composition, methodically interrupted by lyric syllabication. The style — pure Costello — was used often in his 1978 Armed Forces release.
Likewise, the "Black and White World" of Get Happy!! echoes "Welcome to the Working Week," a tune from Elvis' debut album, My Aim is True.
"Black and White World" involves the same array of emotions and musical hooks. Although the language is simple, Costello and his group saturate the song with an amazing number of phase shifts. Their turnarounds are extremely well executed, exploding an otherwise gray scale into fierce color.
"B Movie," "New Amsterdam" and "High Fidelity" reinstate Costello as rock's last chance for a lord of lyric. Although the musical composition of "B Movie" is synonymous with its title, the lyrical plot remains clever. Within, Costello bemoans the fact that his lover is stuffed with sob stories of thin emotion:
"Can't stand it when I throw punch lines you can't feel,
B movie, that's all you are to me.
"New Amsterdam" mocks the old and new Holland (Get Happy!! was recorded there) as Costello toys with word alliteration and rhyme:
"I step on the brake, and I'm out of her clutches,
Do I speak double Dutch to a real double Duchess?
"High Fidelity" rekindles the Costello flair for wordplay. The tune makes for clever analogy between human dalliance and radio station channel changers. "High Fidelity" also is marked by a much huskier vibrato style from Costello.
And this difference is no mean ingredient to several other tunes. Between the country blues of "Motel Matches," the reggae riffs of "Human Touch," and the pop phrases of "Opportunity," "Temptation" and "I Stand Accused," Costello's voice does chameleon duty. This variety may be due to the sheer number of tunes on the disc, but he nonetheless imbues each with style and imagination.
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