Melody Maker, July 28, 1984: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> World's | <center><h3> World's finest </h3></center> | ||
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<center> Allan Jones </center> | <center> Allan Jones </center> | ||
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''' Elvis Costello And The Attractions <br> | |||
Goodbye Cruel World | |||
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''Goodbye Cruel World'' is Elvis Costello's tenth album in seven years; a rough calculation currently puts his published repertoire of original material at around 130 songs. Considering this, it would seem positively churlish to describe his monumental industry, the sheer energy of his invention, as merely prolific. The man obviously ''bleeds'' music. | ''Goodbye Cruel World'' is Elvis Costello's tenth album in seven years; a rough calculation currently puts his published repertoire of original material at around 130 songs. Considering this, it would seem positively churlish to describe his monumental industry, the sheer energy of his invention, as merely prolific. The man obviously ''bleeds'' music. | ||
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There is a sharp sense of spontaneity apparent hers, though, that was oddly missing from the last album, particularly. Abandoning the TKO Horns, who were smeared all over ''Punch The Clock'', the Attractions sound sleeker, more invigorating than they have for a while, with the mighty Pete Thomas sounding especially like he's enjoying himself again after a term in the dog-house. "Sour Milk-Cow Blues," which recalls the nasty sting of "You Belong To Me," and "The Deportees Club," which is carried on a torrent of alliteration, boast nasty riffing edges, played with a howling abandon. The latter, incidentally, quotes from both Costello's own "Man Out Of Time" and The Who's "I Can See For Miles": both sound like they were dashed off by Costello in a rare old temper. | There is a sharp sense of spontaneity apparent hers, though, that was oddly missing from the last album, particularly. Abandoning the TKO Horns, who were smeared all over ''Punch The Clock'', the Attractions sound sleeker, more invigorating than they have for a while, with the mighty Pete Thomas sounding especially like he's enjoying himself again after a term in the dog-house. "Sour Milk-Cow Blues," which recalls the nasty sting of "You Belong To Me," and "The Deportees Club," which is carried on a torrent of alliteration, boast nasty riffing edges, played with a howling abandon. The latter, incidentally, quotes from both Costello's own "Man Out Of Time" and The Who's "I Can See For Miles": both sound like they were dashed off by Costello in a rare old temper. | ||
Contrarily, | Contrarily, ''Cruel World'' has been described elsewhere as Costello's most incoherent album. This criticism was no doubt provoked again by his demonstrable versatility and the fact that on the course of 13 tracks, Elvis covers more ground than most of the competition out together on a hiking holiday. | ||
With their usual formidable finesse, the Attractions take on everything from the lush modern soul of "I Wanna Be Loved" and the swaggeringly nonchalant and thoroughly beguiling "The Only Flame In Town" to the almost folk-rock lilt of the heartfelt "The Comedians," where the chaps, as | With their usual formidable finesse, the Attractions take on everything from the lush modern soul of "I Wanna Be Loved" and the swaggeringly nonchalant and thoroughly beguiling "The Only Flame In Town" to the almost folk-rock lilt of the heartfelt "The Comedians," where the chaps, as Tom Sheehan accurately observed, contrive to sound amazingly like Pentangle. | ||
These are elegantly poised pieces of work by anyone's standards, but there are occasional shortcomings. "Home Truth" is a stab at a torrid ballad, full of guilt and recrimination, in the manner of the classic "Riot Act." It's all a bit ponderous, though, with Nieve's ballistic pianistics {kept discreetly under wraps everywhere else) lending the song a spurious melodrama and Costello's lyric bogging down in a mess of wordy pedantry. "Inch By Inch," which seems to collapse into a tidier reprise of "Watching The Detectives," has a seductive resonance, but ends up getting into a lather about nothing very much at all. | These are elegantly poised pieces of work by anyone's standards, but there are occasional shortcomings. "Home Truth" is a stab at a torrid ballad, full of guilt and recrimination, in the manner of the classic "Riot Act." It's all a bit ponderous, though, with Nieve's ballistic pianistics {kept discreetly under wraps everywhere else) lending the song a spurious melodrama and Costello's lyric bogging down in a mess of wordy pedantry. "Inch By Inch," which seems to collapse into a tidier reprise of "Watching The Detectives," has a seductive resonance, but ends up getting into a lather about nothing very much at all. | ||
Everything else, however, is perfectly on target. "Room With No Number" is a vivid | Everything else, however, is perfectly on target. "Room With No Number" is a vivid nightmarish vignette about passion turning to murder and the mysterious, probably violent disappearance of two lovers; ''The White Hotel'', directed by Hitchcock, perhaps, or D M. Thomas re-writing ''Psycho'', even. Musically, the cut crackles with tension and fairground horror, like some taunting synthesis of Madness' "House Of Fun" and "Green Shirt." | ||
"Worthless Thing," meanwhile, is one of Elvis' most scathing recent songs, a contemptuous portrait of celebrities and the people who adore them. Costello's own ''King Of Comedy'', in fact, with an astonishingly vindictive final verse. "Love Field," which completes side one, is at once sad and bitter, aches with a frozen pain and a poignancy that somehow recalls Gram Parsons. Its tempo is dictated by a throbbing electronic pulse and Thomas' languid drumming. It finally evokes a spellbinding image of an awful, narcissistic loneliness, where sensations are rendered anonymously — ''"feel the anxious rhythm of a functional stranger,"'' Costello intones ominously. | |||
" | "Joe Porterhouse," on side two, forms the first part of a loose trilogy of songs that focus with a compassionate clarity upon the plight of a beleaguered nation. Like "Shipbuilding," the song might have been written as an epitaph for a Britain ravaged by war, though its reference to the victims of Bluff Cove is tantalisingly oblique, and savaged by the attritions imposed by a cruel, heartless Tory government. The song revolves around images of absence, leavings, the death of hope. ''"Don't let them see you crying ''that'' way,"'' Costello insists, his plangent cry bringing a lump the size of Gibralter to the old throat. Regular viewers might also be interested to know that the chorus and its opening line are re-worked from "(I Love You) When You Sleep," which Costello wrote recently for Tracie. | ||
"The Great Unknown," on the other hand, was originally intended for Robert Wyatt, but eventually turned down. I suspect Wyatt might have thought it somehow glib, though I'm sure Elvis won't thank me for saying so. Maybe Robert simply didn't respond to the song's imagery, which is franker, more explicit than "Shipbuilding." The opening verse is a corker, if one might so flippantly describe its evocation of murder (possibly carried out by the IRA), revenge and anonymous death, which is undoubtedly among the finest pieces of writing in the Costello songbook. | |||
''Goodbye Cruel World'' makes its final claim upon our attention with "Peace In Our Time." A neglected masterpiece, it finds Costello with all defences down, addressing himself as directly as possible to at universal concern. Not exactly "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," its sad chart placing reflects a spectacular public deafness; nevertheless, it carries this album out on a note of dignified responsibility. | |||
So: ''Goodbye Cruel World'' isn't just a great album, it's a great ''Elvis Costello'' album. And ''that'', as you should know, is something else altogether. | |||
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{{tags}}[[Goodbye Cruel World]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[My Aim Is True]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces]] {{-}} [[Get Happy!!]] {{-}} [[Trust]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Imperial Bedroom]] {{-}} [[Stax]] {{-}} [[Punch The Clock]] {{-}} [[Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How's Your Fathers]] {{-}} [[Taking Liberties]] {{-}} [[The Imposter]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[Riot Act]] {{-}} [[Secondary Modern]] {{-}} [[The TKO Horns]] {{-}} [[Pete Thomas]] {{-}} [[Sour Milk-Cow Blues]] {{-}} [[You Belong To Me]] {{-}} [[The Deportees Club]] {{-}} [[Man Out Of Time]] {{-}} [[The Who]] {{-}} [[I Wanna Be Loved]] {{-}} [[The Only Flame In Town]] {{-}} [[The Comedians]] {{-}} [[Tom Sheehan]] {{-}} [[Home Truth]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Inch By Inch]] {{-}} [[Watching The Detectives]] {{-}} [[Room With No Number]] {{-}} [[Green Shirt]] {{-}} [[Worthless Thing]] {{-}} [[Love Field]] {{-}} [[Gram Parsons]] {{-}} [[Joe Porterhouse]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[(I Love You) When You Sleep]] {{-}} [[Tracie]] {{-}} [[The Great Unknown]] {{-}} [[Robert Wyatt]] {{-}} [[Peace In Our Time]] | |||
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'''Melody Maker, July 28, 1984 | '''Melody Maker, July 28, 1984 | ||
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*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_Maker Wikipedia: Melody Maker] | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_Maker Wikipedia: Melody Maker] | ||
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[[Category:Melody Maker| Melody Maker 1984-07-28]] | [[Category:Melody Maker| Melody Maker 1984-07-28]] | ||
[[Category:Magazine articles | [[Category:Magazine articles]] | ||
[[Category:Album reviews | [[Category:Album reviews]] | ||
[[Category:Goodbye Cruel World reviews | [[Category:Goodbye Cruel World reviews]] | ||
Latest revision as of 14:32, 21 November 2021
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