Rolling Stone, June 29, 1978: Difference between revisions
(formatting) |
(test) |
||
Line 8: | Line 8: | ||
<center>Kit Rachlis</center> | <center>Kit Rachlis</center> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
{{Bibliography text}} | |||
Listening to Elvis Costello is like walking down a dark, empty street and hearing another set of heels. His music doesn't make you dance, it makes you jump. It doesn't matter that he's stalking his obsessions and not you, because nobody ought to be this sure of his obsessions. But Costello appears determined never to reach that age when, as Joan Didion once put it, "the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them or not." This Year's Model, his second album in less than a year, is Costello's attempt to make certain those wounds stay open. | Listening to Elvis Costello is like walking down a dark, empty street and hearing another set of heels. His music doesn't make you dance, it makes you jump. It doesn't matter that he's stalking his obsessions and not you, because nobody ought to be this sure of his obsessions. But Costello appears determined never to reach that age when, as Joan Didion once put it, "the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them or not." This Year's Model, his second album in less than a year, is Costello's attempt to make certain those wounds stay open. | ||
Line 21: | Line 22: | ||
But there's something else here. If Costello's music is really frightening, it's not devoid of joy - or, for that matter, humour. This Year's Model has the triumph of an adrenalin kick: "The Beat" or "Pump It Up" are not titles chosen randomly. There's bravado in the way Costello's machine-gun mouth sprays out each image, but like all obsessives, he has to get the details right, connect them through the sheer force of his will. So he's reeling and running, shooting from the hip but taking careful aim. He's ready to challenge all comers, it doesn't matter whether it's the rock & roll industry ("Radio Radio") or the National Front ("Night Rally"). "Don't you know I'm an animal," he sings on "Hand In Hand". But later, in "Lipstick Vogue", he amends that: "Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being". Taken together, these are the words of a brutally honest optimist. Damon Runyan once suggested that life was basically a six-to-five proposition against. I suspect that Elvis Costello would consider those good odds. | But there's something else here. If Costello's music is really frightening, it's not devoid of joy - or, for that matter, humour. This Year's Model has the triumph of an adrenalin kick: "The Beat" or "Pump It Up" are not titles chosen randomly. There's bravado in the way Costello's machine-gun mouth sprays out each image, but like all obsessives, he has to get the details right, connect them through the sheer force of his will. So he's reeling and running, shooting from the hip but taking careful aim. He's ready to challenge all comers, it doesn't matter whether it's the rock & roll industry ("Radio Radio") or the National Front ("Night Rally"). "Don't you know I'm an animal," he sings on "Hand In Hand". But later, in "Lipstick Vogue", he amends that: "Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being". Taken together, these are the words of a brutally honest optimist. Damon Runyan once suggested that life was basically a six-to-five proposition against. I suspect that Elvis Costello would consider those good odds. | ||
{{cx}} | |||
{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} |
Revision as of 23:33, 11 January 2013
|