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Imagine one record album that utilizes the talents of Roger McGuinn (once of the Byrds). Paul McCartney, T Bone Burnett, session drummers Jerry Marotta and Jim Kellner, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Marc Ribot and Michael Blair (of Tom Waits' band). Benmont Tench (of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers), T-Bone Wolk (of Hall and Oates' band), jazz bassist Buell Neidlinger and Irish musicians Gary Spillane, Derek Bell and Christy Moore, among many others.
Elvis Costello did more than just imagine it; he recorded it. The result is Spike, the most recent album in a brilliant career. Unlike most of his other records, which tended to be more focused thematically and musically, Spike is a sprawling, huge work, revealing many new aspects of Costello's already varied talents.
There certainly have been precedents. Two years ago, Costello suspended his partnership with his longtime backing band, the Attractions, to produce the remarkably dense, country-influenced King of America, perhaps the finest album he had made. But that record saw him working with a core group of musicians, as well as a relatively consistent set of lyrical ideas.
Spike is anything but consistent. The exuberant pop gem "Veronica" vies with the vicious dirge "Tramp the Dirt Down," the insane rockabilly nightmare "Pads, Paws and Claws," the Irish ballad "Any King's Shilling" and the powerful, jazz-tinged "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror." Subject matter ranges from children's fantasies of a schoolteacher as a witch to adult nightmares about satellite voyeurism, from unhappy human relationships to the decision of God to abandon the human race.
There are no outright failures on Spike, although a couple of songs seem to get short shrift of Costello's usual melodic gifts, and there are many dazzling successes.
The first five songs on the album are brilliant. "...This Town..." features McGuinn's chiming 12-string guitar with McCartney's bass line dancing around the empty space as Costello sings a bitingly satirical lyric to an engaging melody. The tag is, "You're nobody till everybody in this town thinks you're a bastard."
"Let Him Dangle" uses a famous British murder trial as the basis for a straightforward cry against capital punishment. Although it has been rare for Costello to sing lyrics this direct, there is precedent in the angry "Radio, Radio" or the ironic "Peace in Our Time." The hook of the song features a nice chorus, and Marc Ribot's guitars attack from every conceivable angle any empty space they're given.
"Deep Dark Truthful Mirror" is the most arresting song on the album. New Orleans piano wizard Allen Toussaint lays down a gospel-flavored base, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band layers on beautiful harmonies with echoes of '20s jazz, and Costello sings with passionate intensity of a woman who has done him wrong.
"Veronica" practically jumps out of the stereo with bubbly enthusiasm, thanks largely to an irresistible melody line and McCartney's bouncing bass part. The lyrics examine the life and memories of an old woman who now sometimes forgets her name. Costello says he didn't try for a hit single on this album, but in the best of all worlds, "Veronica" would be No. 1 for months.
"God's Comic" is a hilarious cosmic romp through heaven, with a haunting refrain that features layers of vocals dancing around one another singing the words, "Now I'm dead." Who can resist the image of God listening to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem, and then saying, "I prefer the one about my son"?
No songwriter since the heyday of Bob Dylan and the Beatles has so consistently produced such brilliant work as Costello over the last 12 years. And unlike many performers who appear as blazing lights before burning down to pale shadows of their original creativity, Costello has produced his finest work in the last three years. Spike is a brilliant tour de force from one of the greater pop musicians of our time.
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