Melody Maker, February 23, 1980: Difference between revisions
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Doubts about ''Armed Forces'', doubts about his production job for the Specials, even doubts about his politics — you can see what might have led Elvis to react away from the glossy expansiveness of his last record (which I actually think was underrated, though I saw the cracks too), though cynics might say that the feel of ''Get Happy!'' has just as much to do with the latest outbreak of Sixties chic. | Doubts about ''Armed Forces'', doubts about his production job for the Specials, even doubts about his politics — you can see what might have led Elvis to react away from the glossy expansiveness of his last record (which I actually think was underrated, though I saw the cracks too), though cynics might say that the feel of ''Get Happy!'' has just as much to do with the latest outbreak of Sixties chic. | ||
There's a traditional Sixties cover, which I don't like any more than the inner sleeve and the useless poster, and a comment from Nick Lowe (producing again) on the album's containing 20 tracks which reassures " | There's a traditional Sixties cover, which I don't like any more than the inner sleeve and the useless poster, and a comment from Nick Lowe (producing again) on the album's containing 20 tracks which reassures "hi-fi enthusiasts and people who have never bought a record made before 1967" that no loss of sound-quality results. It's as if the Sixties have again become an incomparable golden age, and those who remember it are one-up on the rest of us, a notion which plagued the early Seventies and which I hoped punk had dispelled. | ||
There's a further typically Stiff-derived gimmick in the fact that side one on the label is side two on the sleeve and vice versa, but Elvis undoubtedly must have had artistic (as well as promotional) reasons for this shift in focus — he's astute (and contemporary) enough to know that, when in doubt, a course in three-minute basics is probably a good idea. At 47-odd minutes the album is long, but not extraordinarily so, which means the ten songs on each side have to rattle through like a fusillade, only one passing the three-minute mark and five not even making two minutes. Each song, then, has to state its case succinctly, and it's a credit to Costello's ability to condense his ideas that you never feel a piece should have had more room to develop. Indeed, "Riot Act," that one three-minute shot, seems if anything too long and portentous as it plays out one side. | There's a further typically Stiff-derived gimmick in the fact that side one on the label is side two on the sleeve and vice versa, but Elvis undoubtedly must have had artistic (as well as promotional) reasons for this shift in focus — he's astute (and contemporary) enough to know that, when in doubt, a course in three-minute basics is probably a good idea. At 47-odd minutes the album is long, but not extraordinarily so, which means the ten songs on each side have to rattle through like a fusillade, only one passing the three-minute mark and five not even making two minutes. Each song, then, has to state its case succinctly, and it's a credit to Costello's ability to condense his ideas that you never feel a piece should have had more room to develop. Indeed, "Riot Act," that one three-minute shot, seems if anything too long and portentous as it plays out one side. |
Revision as of 07:19, 20 September 2020
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