New Musical Express, February 16, 1980: Difference between revisions
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‘Get Happy!!’ comes at a good time, but in a sense it also comes at the wrong time. It makes deliberate nods to the period that inspired it (the jokey time-warped sleeve admits to everything before you even play it) but it makes them well over six months too late. That doesn’t make it a bad album. No way. The skill and style with which the participants have adapted the sound – and all the familiar elements of Elvis Costello are still around, even two songs in country waltz time – shows the door to all the young contenders for the new soul crown. ‘Get Happy!!’ gets it right. Simple as that. It’s a long way from just a re-creation. | ‘Get Happy!!’ comes at a good time, but in a sense it also comes at the wrong time. It makes deliberate nods to the period that inspired it (the jokey time-warped sleeve admits to everything before you even play it) but it makes them well over six months too late. That doesn’t make it a bad album. No way. The skill and style with which the participants have adapted the sound – and all the familiar elements of Elvis Costello are still around, even two songs in country waltz time – shows the door to all the young contenders for the new soul crown. ‘Get Happy!!’ gets it right. Simple as that. It’s a long way from just a re-creation. | ||
I have a friend who thinks Costello has a method. [[Iggy Pop| Iggy]] and [[David Bowie|Bowie]] used it to write ‘Lust For Life’. You take a song, as a model or jumping-off point, and then gradually strip away the parts, replacing them with your own, until the original song is all but un-recognisable. He imagines it isn’t as precise as that, however For, say, ‘[[Temptation]]’ Elvis had a lyric and just said to the band play like ‘Green Onions’ or something (‘Temptation' isn’t a million miles removed from ‘Green Onions’). My friend also hears ‘We Can Work It Out’ (‘[[Clowntime Is Over]]’) and ‘[[I Saw Her Standing There]]’ (‘[[Beaten To The Punch]]’) as well as echoes of certain Supremes’ songs. So maybe soul was simply last year’s model. And talking of models ... | |||
The songs on ‘Get Happy!!’ wére written over a year in which Elvis can’t help but have changed somehow considering the way events upset his previous poise. Broadly speaking, the lyrics seem to come from either a period of sleepless nights in the US of A, or from later, more conciliatory times back home. | |||
Elvis still isn’t too enamoured of the modern world (and he rails humourously at the harbinger of bleakness and automation on ‘(I Need, I Need, I Need A) [[Human Touch]]’ —which is also, appropriately, a fine tribute to The Specials), but he seems more at ease this time with the strain between his curiously old-fashioned morality and modern temptations, if only marginally less bitter at the bind he, and others, find themselves in. Try, for starters, ‘[[Black And White World]]’: “''I was looking at the black and white world/Trying to nail some pin up/Those days she was just a beautiful girl/Now she’s plain-and hung up/It seemed so exciting if you’d only put me back to back with that girl/With just a little lighting/There’ll never be days like that again/Can I resist a bargain?”'' | |||
The question seems to have been answered. But Elvis’ camera keeps clicking in his head. Here’s a sordid, sorry little polaroid from the sexual supermarket with music down home from [[Aretha Franklin]] and lyrics from one of the prime exponents of the wry country idiom. “''Boys everywhere , fumbling with the catches/I struck lucky with motel matches/Falling for you without a second look/Falling out of your open pocket book/ Giving you away like motel matches'' (‘[[Motel Matches]]’). | |||
With 20 songs, and no solos to interrupt them, there are a lot of lyrics on this album, and there’s a lot being said with a greater sense of direct autobiographical honesty (some of it very graphic) and with less of a feeling of contrivance than on previous albums. Elvis doesn’t seem to be under as big an obligation as on “Armed Forces” to keep coming up with those pithy puns and coy couplets. | |||
There’s a much better rhythm and expression here; a greater, more enjoyable, liberty. He must have been aware of his tendency to sound, at times, unbearably forced, and “Get Happy!!” doesn’t. | |||
It’s a record you didn’t expect. It looks like fun and it is. Maybe it’s only a temporary lapse, but Elvis has gotten off the treadmill and gotten happy. Get it. | |||
[[Paul Rambali]] | |||
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Revision as of 11:48, 9 April 2013
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