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When I saw the ten-songs-per-side format and the hype from "your friend" Nick Lowe on the back cover of Get Happy!!, I swore I'd destroy the record if it skipped once. But it didn't, and given the Sun-session simplicity of the sound, all those extra grooves don't really matter. This album seems to rediscover the spare Elvis of My Aim is True, offering a wealth of new material thrown up rough shod. Since Costello's passions have always come in spurts—tense, abrupt, held in check—the two minute cuts don't sell him short. Only "The Imposter" and "Beaten to the Punch," because of their tempo rather than their length, seem to rush by unnoticed. Elvis' pissy voice and occasional guitar accomplishments, set against the Attractions' bare organ-trio accompaniment, and his unlimited flow of clever put-downs, razor-sharp double meanings, and tortured submissions, seem more honest here in the no-nonsense, let's-do-it performances.
The album's cover art borrows its cold clashing color combinations, cut-out geometric shapes, and paste-up composition from Fifties packaging. But unlike James White's Off White, this isn't a campy gesture. It's more like the Clash's stolen Presley cover—the old-fashioned design paying homage to, and boasting of, the roots of the album's music. Like his own Labour of Lust, Nick Lowe's production abandons the trashy pure-pop Spectorisms of last year's product for a more demanding pre-Beatles primitivism. And if Lowe seems to have been shamed away from pop moves by Rockpile purist Dave Edmunds, Costello and his band have never been comfortable with anything pretty anyway. Costello's tape-it-as-I-hear-it, near-live production of The Specials has seemingly redirected him to new-wave urgency. And like the ska revivalists, he has rediscovered raw punk sound on the upbeat. Slavering and slashing in a world of femme fatales, saving himself in sexual power struggles with verbal potency, his devastating character takes, wicked self-abasements and witty social condemnations bespeak real personality crisis. But Elvis is more compassionate here, funnier, less threatening, sadder than angry, resolving bitterness through hard work and good-humored nasties.
If "Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being" on This Year's Model seemed to reveal some soft spot, then "Give it to me, give it to me / I need, I need, I need a human touch" sounds positively socialized. And "Look at the man that you call uncle / having a heart attack around your ankles" is healthier and funnier than "I don't wanna be your lover, I just wanna be your victim." Elvis hasn't lost his wit(s); there's a good line in every one of these songs. And while mere wisecracking tough-talk sounded facile and empty within Armed Forces' overdone pop format (which was facile and empty), they're all that's needed to make these soulful miniatures kick in with a vengeance.
Elvis' usually diverse, spare guitar fills, as well as Steve Naive's solid organ hooks, are often suppressed. The mix is dominated by lead vocals and rhythm, with the instruments taking on that Motown/Spector distance. But the vocals are equal to the spotlight, bellowing powerfully or evincing a bitter-sweet lyricism that we haven't heard since "Alison." On "Secondary Modern" for instance, there's a great moment when Elvis jumps into falsetto on the words "blue-to-blue," and there's a great David Johansen-like scream at the end of "Beaten to the Punch."
The most sophisticated instrumental effect, and one that is pervasive, is the double-tracking of organ and piano together, simulating a wall-of-sound density on the Jackson 5-ish "Love for Tender," the equally Motown-inflected "Hi Fidelity" and the Sam and Dave cover "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down." When two guitars, one acoustic and one electric, appear together on "New Amsterdam" they sound lush in context. Elvis' Specials associations show up on the ska-beat "Human Touch," and "B-Movie" is sort of an R&B dub. Because of the unflattering sound and the abundance and variety of material, the hooks don't kick in immediately but cut deeper each time. And they don't wear thin like more accessible pop. But though the social and fictional breadth of songs like "Radio Radio," "Oliver's Army," and "Senior Service" seem to have been left behind for a more private and immediate content and music, the album is somewhat more substantial. Detached and reflective, it may or may not be his best, but Get Happy!! is the most real record Elvis Costello has ever made.
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