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If you buy one of Elvis Costello's lesser efforts, you'll be sorry. When Elvis is good he is very good, but when he is bad he stinks. He makes no mediocre albums.
Trust, his latest, is a good Costello album. In fact, it's the best record on the charts by a New Wave artist. Trust me. Trust Elvis this time. This is a good one.
The fourteen-song album is a return to form for Elvis to the early days. It contains the same quality he demonstrated on his first two albums — My Aim Is True and This Year's Model.
In between those two albums was a shipload of dreck on albums such as Get Happy and Armed Forces. On those albums, Costello seemed to make a concerted effort to ignore the clear melodic lines guitar lines that placed him a cut above the punk-new wavers from his native England.
A good album like Trust may be followed by an abysmal one, if his track record is any indication. His fans (predominately male) may adore his succinct songs of loving and losing but it seems he could really care less what his public expects.
In past years he has ignored adoring crowds while in concert. He also said some uncomplimentary things about American legend Ray Charles.
However, lately he has turned over a new leaf, it seems. He praised American legends Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show and has actually been cordial to concertgoers.
Nick Lowe produced Trust for Costello, once again bringing a clarity of sound seldom heard on New Wave records.
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