Melody Maker, May 18, 1991: Difference between revisions
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I have always laboured under the ... no, that's unfair, I have never laboured. I have always fannied about under the misconception that Elvis Costello was a glamourless righteous politico, Braggish, not my thing, all CND badges and peace marches and anti-vivisection lobbies. Which are all... whatever, whatever. Songs, surely, should get under the ''individual's'' skin, should reveal and rebuke and rejoice and sting, should say things that can't be said, should weep and kick and scratch and bite. Though every other year I might begrudgingly notice a deft line, I never realised that this is what Costello does best and does more often than he does anything else. ''Mighty Like A Rose'' sacrifices fringe sociology to personalty involved spite, and is bitter and twisted and magnificent. | I have always laboured under the ... no, that's unfair, I have never laboured. I have always fannied about under the misconception that Elvis Costello was a glamourless righteous politico, Braggish, not my thing, all CND badges and peace marches and anti-vivisection lobbies. Which are all... whatever, whatever. Songs, surely, should get under the ''individual's'' skin, should reveal and rebuke and rejoice and sting, should say things that can't be said, should weep and kick and scratch and bite. Though every other year I might begrudgingly notice a deft line, I never realised that this is what Costello does best and does more often than he does anything else. ''Mighty Like A Rose'' sacrifices fringe sociology to personalty involved spite, and is bitter and twisted and magnificent. | ||
Recently converted via the ''Girls Girls | Recently converted via the ''Girls Girls Girls'' albums (but spare me all that country tosh), I was struck at how revelatory it was to hear hirsute hooks and intelligent impassioned lyrics. Is ''anybody'' else doing this after the semi-successful wave-of-sound tides? Barely. If Costello is the last melting icicle in Romantica then I'm on his side to the tip of the scraggiest whisker. | ||
All the master songwriter's misogyny comes flooding out of this record. By misogyny I probably mean the snarl of the rejected, the rotten self-pitying venom of the disillusioned romantic idealist, taught by citric experience to push her away before she blows you out. I can't believe a man of Coste4lo's age is being this frank and fearless and not coming on like some easily palatable "new man" cipher. All the best pop records moan ''with'' panache about the opposite gender. The microphone as confessor. The performer as ''bitch-with-script.'' | All the master songwriter's misogyny comes flooding out of this record. By misogyny I probably mean the snarl of the rejected, the rotten self-pitying venom of the disillusioned romantic idealist, taught by citric experience to push her away before she blows you out. I can't believe a man of Coste4lo's age is being this frank and fearless and not coming on like some easily palatable "new man" cipher. All the best pop records moan ''with'' panache about the opposite gender. The microphone as confessor. The performer as ''bitch-with-script.'' |
Revision as of 11:39, 11 October 2013
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