At a time when for many artists it's sufficient to release one album every two or three years, Elvis Costello's productivity is in itself noteworthy. During the last 12 months, he has released 54 songs — 20 each on the albums Get Happy!! and Taking Liberties, and this week, there are 14 new Costello compositions on the album Trust.
To consider the achievement such prolificacy indicates, imagine how long it would take the Eagles to release an equal amount of studio-recorded music. (This allows us to enhance the comparison by ignoring the Eagles' latest live album, which consists primarily of previously released material anyway.) The Eagles album, The Long Run, released last year, was that band's first record in three years. The Eagles, then, average three songs per year to Costello's 54. It would therefore take the Eagles approximately until the year 1996 to release as much material as Costello did in the last year alone.
What is astonishing about Costello, whose shows at the Palladium tomorrow night through Monday are sold out, is not the quantity of his output, but that he maintains such a substantial level of quality. Last year's Taking Liberties, an album of singles, B-sides, and scattered material unreleased in the United States, showed that even Costello's cast-offs were more interesting than most artists' primary efforts.
Trust not only displays no drop-off in quality, but it reveals an increasing musical adventurousness on the part of Costello and his band, the Attractions. His structures remain terse — he delivers most of his musical dioramas in under three minutes — but he and the Attractions, with the advice and consent of producer Nick Lowe, are using a wider array of sonic colors than ever before.
On the overpowering "From A Whisper To A Scream," which stands among his very best songs, Costello sings with the exclamatory verve of Tina Turner. The arrangement is an uncharacteristically overstated but entirely appropriate update of Holland-Dozier-Holland's manic Motown epiphanies for the Supremes, Four Tops and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. If Linda Ronstadt can sing Costello's songs, why not Diana Ross?
Costello also continues his exploration of country music in "Different Finger," which would be a fine vehicle for Tammy Wynette. (In Costello's most successful foray into honky-tonk music, "Stranger In the House," he sang a duet with Wynette's former husband and partner George Jones.)
There are further rhythm and tempo variations that give richness to Trust. "Shot With His Own Gun" is a waltz with a gorgeously recorded solo' piano; "Fish 'N' Chip Paper" has elements of boogie-woogie; "Luxembourg" presses hard with modernized rockabilly; and "Clubland" utilizes some spicy latin piano figures. The more conventional rockers remain powerful as well, with the peak, perhaps, "Lovers Walk," which utilizes enormous-sounding tribal drums on a Buddy Holly meets Gary Glitter beat.
Lyrically, Costello remains preoccupied with the little murders lovers routinely commit. Like all Costello albums, the lyrics to Trust are a bit difficult to decipher at first. But on the initially audible evidence, his fondness for alliteration, puns, and other forms of verbal foreplay remain intact. I particularly like "good manners and bad breath will get you nowhere," from "New Lace Sleeves;" a reference to "the musical valium" in the nervous shuffle "Strict Time"; and his Raymond Chandler-like observation in "Big Sister's Clothes": "she's got eyes like saucers / oh, she thinks she's a dish."
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