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If artists ever enter rock music with something to say, the muse has usually left them by their third album. All the more impressive therefore that Elvis Costello manages to cram his fourteenth with as many fresh themes, ideas and images as his first.
Even when early songs were backed by tap-a-long melodies there was always something separating Elvis from his punk contemporaries. While they voiced a generalised anger, Costello focused on personal relationships and social issues with unrestrained venom.
Call it honesty, call it exceptional talent, the fact is few artists could articulate themselves and their conflicting emotions in the way that Elvis managed.
He's been through many guises in recent times but his new album finds him back to his savage best tilting his lance at both love and iconic windmills. If the pen is mightier than the sword then it's even more powerful when supported by a few hundred watts of the finest session players around.
Despite their obvious quality, recent albums have tended to be disjointed affairs with songs forced together in conflict rather than as bedfellows. Mighty Like A Rose (Warners) is much more cohesive.
Opening with the sub Beach Boy bopper "The Other Side Of Summer," the real Costello only gets started with track two, "Hurry Down Doomsday." Reminiscent of Lennon at his most vitriolic it's a savage, tangental rant about the obsessively commercial world.
"How To Be Dumb" is Costello's "Fourth Street." Resonating with sarcasm and uncontrolled fury it leads into "All Grown Up," a song that could have been an out-take from Imperial Bedroom.
"Invasion Hit Parade" hits out at phoniness and media control, "The liberation forces make movies of their own, playing their Doors records and pretending to be stoned / Drowning out a broadcast that wasn't authorised. Incidentally the revolution will be televised."
If anyone understands "Harpies Bizarre" perhaps they'd let me in on the secret. The woodwind quintet also seem lost on this unfocused piece but things improve quickly with the closing track on side one.
"After The Fall" is a real gem which adds Costello's cinematic vision to the torch-ballad tradition of Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel.
"She said, 'You never visit the countryside, so I've made you a country to order' / She put up a little tent in the bedroom, Crickets played on a tape recorder."
"Georgie And Her Rival," an unusually linear story song, leads into "So Like Candy," one of the two Paul McCartney collaborations and another song that will pass into the "classic Costello" category. Pain may never sound so beautiful again.
The other joint composition is an energetic, enjoyable but unremarkable rocker "Playboy To A Man" which is completely overshadowed by its neighbour "Sweet Pear," the only true love song on the album.
While "Broken," written by wife Cait, is a tedious dirge that makes one grateful for programmable CD players, El's parting shot, "Couldn't Call It Unexpected" is both a statement of intent and the work of a master wordsmith who has comfortably exchanged precociousness for maturity.
Costello albums are not always easy beasts to love. They don't nuzzle into your consciousness, they snap and bite.
But while he might never be filed under "easy listening" any section marked "quality" would have to contain his albums — all 14 of them.
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