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The music of Elvis Costello packs the kind of punch that rock has practically abandoned in this decade. It is clever, tough, disarmingly direct and steeped in pop classicism. There just aren't any compromises in his music, and this is what Costello is all about.
An awesomely talented singer/composer/guitarist, Costello is a 22-year-old Englishman and angry traditionalist who is presently exploding on an unsuspecting American music scene. My Aim Is True (Columbia JC 35037) marks not only the flowering of a major artist, but also the appearance of a true angry voice, something rock hasn't had in seeming ages.
His emergence hasn't been without its share of mystery. Little has been known of him outside the pages of English music papers and import bins in record stores. What is certain is that he is a native of Whitton, Middlesex, who has been writing songs for nine years. He spent a couple of years knocking on record company doors with demonstration tapes, and received several rejections before signing with Stiff Records, a young London outfit that led him to sign with Columbia Records.
Costello was also a computer analyst at an Elizabeth Arden plant, and recorded My Aim Is True on his days off. He spits in the face of most external pop conventions, and admits a strong dislike for most of today's music, especially extended guitar solos. He has been openly critical of the music industry, and describes himself as "an extraordinarily bitter person."
Columbia brought Costello to America for a brief debut tour that covered only a few cities, including a New Orleans appearance at Jed's last week. The album was released during the tour, but some mystery continued. Costello doesn't believe in long lists of credits on albums (only producer Nick Lowe is credited), so the identities of the backing musicians remain unknown. Columbia didn't allow him to grant any interviews, and it is not known if any of his tour sidemen played on the album.
My Aim Is True contains 13 songs, and each one sounds like a hit single. It opens with "Welcome to the Working Week," a one minute and 22 second introduction with a confident, biting vocal backed by a fierce, jarring instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums. It is a brief, booming start, and is only the first of several examples of the ideal rock form.
Costello is a master of the three-minute form, and "Miracle Man" shows this. Driven along at a medium tempo, it is sung in both a shout and a sneer, with a convincing American dialect. In this tune and the following "No Dancing," there are massive chunks of bass drum and bass that recall both the early Who and "Pass Off the Hatchet" by Roger and the Gypsies.
Whether singing or playing, Costello reveals that his work has no weaknesses, and not a single excess. At a little over three-and-a-half minutes, "Watching the Detectives" is the album's longest song. It begins with a drum bomb that signals a reggae motif with bass and organ, then Costello enters with a piercing four-note signature. His vocal here is a breathy leer, and it describes a disappearance, a murder and its investigation. The pauses are plenty and dramatic, and Costello ends it with the same four-note signature.
Costello, who seems to have a command of all the elements that make a single a hit, reportedly wrote the monumental "Less Than Zero" quickly before recording it. It has an illusory simplicity, beginning like "Hang On Sloopy," but changing to something else altogether. A severely fuzz-toned guitar outlines the song, which has instrumental quotations from the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie." Lyrically, it is compactly alliterative, and should require several dozen listenings before unraveling. It is a ferocious, catchy tune, and surely stands as one of the great pop compositions of the last 20 years.
"Mystery Dance" is yet another instant classic that churns along in a straight Chuck Berry manner, with lyrics delivered in an exultant rockabilly tough-guy style. As elsewhere, the instrumentation is spare and unadulterated, with a suspenseful ending that is a composition itself.
Costello claims that almost all his songs are motivated by feelings of revenge and guilt, and "I'm Not Angry" bears this out. The taut, nervous arrangement comprises one of the most menacing hard rock declarations of all time, with him snarling over the indiscretions of a two-timing girlfriend (a recurring theme with him).
"Waiting for the End of the World" has a majesty that would certify Costello as a major figure had he recorded it and nothing else. Like practically every other song, it is textbook hard rock, with a walloping bass drum intro and epigrammatic bass figures combining to create the kind of excitement that can only be heard in vintage Who and Kinks. The lyrics (an astonishingly livid allegory dealing with patience and violence, not all of it repressed) are exemplary, and he handles them with a corner-of-the-mouth urgency. If you've been wondering about what became of the wit, mystery and sheer punch of rock, this is it.
Costello's appearance at Jed's last Wednesday was a blistering display of power. Looking like a bespectacled teenage physics prodigy who was raised on Top 40 radio, he opened before a somewhat stunned audience (many of whom expected an Elvis Presley look-and-sound-alike show) with "Welcome to the Working Week," immediately followed by "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes."
The first thing that became obvious during his performance was that Costello doesn't believe in resting during or between numbers. "Mystery Dance" was done, as was "Waiting for the End of the World." His amplifier seemed to be turned to half volume, and he allowed his band, the Attractions (Pete Thomas on drums, Bruce Thomas on bass, Steve Young on keyboards) to pound freely, with only occasional silent directions (mostly wicked stares) keeping the changes intact.
His stage presence included long, unsmiling and frequently indignant glances into the audience, sometimes punctuated with obsessive sign language: arm and finger extensions, reaching for the back of his neck to grab his own collar, hands clasped in prayer and an acting out of a line from "Watching the Detectives" — "I don't know how much more of this I can take / She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake."
He introduced several new numbers, including "Stranger in the House," "No Action" and "You're Not Just Another Mouth in the Lipstick Vogue." Once again, each sounded like an instant classic.
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