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Devoted Elvis Costello fans can now rest assured that their King's seemingly bottomless reservoirs of creativity are still overflowing and are still being tapped. The release of three albums containing fifty-four songs — count 'em, fifty-four — within the last twelve months has left no room for doubt in the minds of the most skeptical critics that Elvis did not burn himself out with his first three brilliant waxings. Get Happy!! and Taking Liberties, released at the beginning and end of 1980, provide the same powerful yet controlled music, the same emotional yet carefully chosen lyrics that Costello fans first enjoyed in My Aim is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces. Now, to add icing to the cake. Elvis has delivered yet another gift — Trust.
Consistent with Get Happy!!, Costello's last thematic work, the title of his new album is paradoxical to what its songs convey: in Get Happy!!, Elvis is sad to the point of suicide; in Trust, Elvis is cynical to the point of paranoia. Almost every song either depicts "bad lovers" whose ill-conceived relationships have no trust or, from his own experience, warns young artists to be careful of mass media and its necessary "invasion of your privacy." The record doesn't even spin its way through the second song before Elvis starts his attack against insincere lovers who are always "making promises that they can't keep."
Four songs later, in "Luxembourg," Elvis uses reverberation and playful falsetto to blend his words into an inaudible mess, only to cut the effect on reaching the line, "You say that you love her when you really loathe her." His animosity toward false lovers peaks in "New Lace Sleeves." Here Elvis describes two such people who must make "shy apologies and polite regrets" the morning after a party during which "slow dancing left no one in love." Indeed, using raw honesty, Elvis, himself recently divorced and "Looking for a hand with a personal touch," reveals that he will not accept from a prospective mate anything less than absolute candor.
Costello's long-term hatred of mass media is perhaps most masterfully incorporated within "Watch Your Step," a breathy, intimate ballad whose soft, attractive music can easily cover serious content: "Watch who's knocking on your front door / Now you know that they're watching / What are you waiting for? / Think you're young and original / Get out before / They get to watch your step."
But unlike his other albums, Elvis seems to be suspicious of more than just the press, radio and television. Now he seems to be suffering from paranoia: In "Different Finger," Elvis confesses, "I can't stand those suspicious glances / 'Cause they seem to cover every move I make"; in "White Knuckles" he cries out, "I don't close my eyes when I go to sleep"; by the second to last song on the album, Elvis, suspicious of everybody and trusting nobody, sings, "The man in the laundry mat is looking through your underwear."
Despite the rather negative tone of the album, its great music makes one forget that Elvis is in an unhappy state of mind. Steve Nieve's new classical touch on the piano adds even greater depth to the already fabulous Attractions. Trust shows off Elvis's versatility, as he sings powerfully and passionately in "Clubland" and "From a Whisper to a Scream," and then quietly and beautifully in "Watch Your Step" and "Shot With His Own Gun." In other words, Elvis has increased not only the quantity of his music, but also, and more importantly, its quality.
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