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Elvis Costello's no slouch when it comes to being prolific — Blood & Chocolate is his second album in 10 months. The last one, King of America, had Costello using his given name (Declan MacManus) and playing with a new band called The Confederates — actually, they were former confederates of the Other Elvis.
On Blood & Chocolate, Costello is back with his longtime band, The Attractions, and producer, Nick Lowe. Some of the album notes are in Esperanto, and Costello has a new pseudonym: He's referred to in the credits as Napoleon Dynamite.
Considering one recurring influence on the album, however, you have to wonder why he didn't call himself Elvis Dylan.
Dylan references are perceptible throughout, but so is the work and style of other 1960s heroes. The one unequivocally great moment is "Tokyo Storm Warning," which has been released as a seven-minute single. The music is based on the Rolling Stones' riffs to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "19th Nervous Breakdown," while the florid, hallucinatory word flow recalls Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues": "Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery... knew I was in trouble but thought I was in hell."
The rollicking "Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind?" could be an outtake from Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, while the morose, obsessive "I Want You" takes a title from "Blonde on Blonde" and a riff from the Beatles' "She's So Heavy." The lyrics are pure Costello: "I'm gonna say it once again 'til I instill it / I know I'm going to feel this way until you kill it."
Though there's some routine work here, most of the songs have something to recommend: "Blue Chair" is a Costello-style saloon song with a nice hook; "Uncomplicated" is notable for the ferocity of The Attractions' garage-band attack; "I Hope You're Happy Now" has a great put-down line: "You make him sound like frozen food / His love will last forever." The nice thing about making two albums a year is that every track doesn't have to be a masterpiece; Blood & Chocolate isn't great Elvis, or Declan, or Napoleon, or whoever he is this week, but it is quite good enough until the next one.
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