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Perhaps the Attractions of this recording aren't as pronounced as we thought, but on Elvis Costello's new recording Brutal Youth, the sound is much like the London-born rocker's other recent albums without his long departed group.
That's not to say that the music Mr. Costello has made after 1984's Goodbye Cruel World when he dropped The Attractions, the band he played with for more than seven years, isn't good.
The singer has always shown himself to be one of rock's most intelligent singers and craftsmen.
His works exhibit a dry, jaundiced wit, intelligent production and occasionally some of the best written lines you will find in any rock lyrics today.
So what is the problem?
It could be that Brutal Youth shows that perhaps the most brutal thing about youth for a rock star is losing it.
I listened to Brutal Youth four times while doing other things and found that although it was extremely listenable, with the exception of one or two of its 15 songs, it left little impression.
After realizing this, I played it again, painstakingly trying to analyze each of the songs. I found them intelligent and well-performed, if sometimes maddeningly ambiguous.
The young Elvis Costello's music didn't patiently await intellectual investigation, but snatched you like tabloids talked about aliens snatching the other Elvis.
You didn't have to make a conscious decision to explore his music, you were inexorably drawn into it by a sort of musical beam that you couldn't understand or resist.
Brutal Youth is an ironic title because in some ways Mr. Costello's modern music has not aged well.
The primary reason for this is because his music is genuine and because it was based on passion, often anger.
While other former new wave artists, such as David Bowie, who generated an impersonal often decadent facade, can get along quite well performing a parody of their former selves, Mr. Costello's true attractions were the anger and wit that seemed so barely harnessed by intelligent lyrics and minimal, razor-sharp accompaniment.
Elvis Costello fans, and I am one, will probably find Brutal Youth worth exploring for the spurts of true emotion which overcome the often dispassionate intellectualism of some of his current songs.
But those who aren't diehard fans, will be better served spending their money on his recent Rykodisc collection Elvis Costello & The Attractions 2½ Years, when youth was not only brutal, but as listenable as it has ever been.
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