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In case you hadn't noticed, the Elvis Costello backlash is upon us, and it shouldn't come as any particular surprise, the recent brouhaha over his allegedly racist remarks about Ray Charles and James Brown quite aside. But it is an indication of just how fast things happen in pop music that the man who absolutely creamed the competition for Album of the Year in a January Village Voice critics' poll could get punched out by Bonnie Bramlett (whose stock with critics is about as low as Barry Manilow's) in March for being obnoxious, and yet it's Bramlett who comes off looking like the good guy.
But, like I said, no surprise. Costello is both a commercial success and a bona fide star now, and he's done for punk/New Wave what his namesake did for rock 'n' roll: made it "respectable." So, given that none of his work up until now has exactly dripped with compassion for human frailty and that he's the B.M.O.C. of the whole scene, it's only natural that people should be gunning for him both critically and literally (there were 150 anonymous threats of violence the night of his recent appearance at New York's Palladium).
Unfortunately for the new King, his album Armed Forces comes out at roughly the same time as the Arista debut of Graham Parker (himself also — and already — the victim of an Elvis-derived backlash); viewed dispassionately, it looks distinctly second best in comparison. In pop music, timing is everything, and Parker (who has, superficially, things in common with Elvis — they're both short, intense, pub- and punk-influenced) made the mistake of coming to our initial attention mere months before Costello. He suffered for it commercially, and it was probably a question of focus. Elvis' first two albums immediately established an identifiable style, both musically and in terms of image-mongering; his lyrics were all revenge and guilt while his band sounded both pop and serious. Parker, on the other hand, had a tendency to wander stylistically — a Dylanesque diatribe here, an r-&-b raver there, and while I found his first two records generally as compelling as Elvis', there was no question that he came off a tad lightweight. A muddled third album and a second-rate live set released to fulfill a contractual commitment didn't help the situation much either.
Squeezing Out Sparks, however, is not only the definitive Graham Parker but a watershed work that may one day be regarded as the first true Eighties record. Its theme, in the immortal words of P-Funk mastermind George Clinton, might be summarized as "Think! It ain't illegal yet," except that Parker wants to shake you up and make damn sure that you feel, too. This is a savage, furious indictment of the failure of nerve of the narcissistic Me Decade, and the aim is unerringly true. There are lethal snipes at all sorts of Seventies preoccupations, from the disco mentality ("Saturday Night Is Dead," and with this song is it ever!), to easy acceptance of the futility of relationships ("Discovering Japan"), to the idea that our salvation will come from some "outside" force, be it political white knights like Jerry Brown or Margaret Thatcher or Close Encounters aliens ("Waiting for the UFO's"). But there's no glib sloganeering; these are not Sixties protest songs. Rather, Jack Nitzsche's pared-down production, the Rumour's whiplash guitar attack, and Parker's choked, soulful singing all combine, in the best rock tradition, to form an almost physical assault: the message comes across in the sheer intensity of the sound and the beat. You may not catch all the words, but nonetheless you'll know exactly what they mean the minute you hear them. Like all the greats, from Presley to Dylan to the Who to Springsteen to Phil Spector to the Clash, Parker's new music sounds like what it says.
Elvis' new music does too, of course, but only in the sense that it sounds like what he's saying is that he's unsure of what he's saying. It's a holding action, but he gets away with it because his sense of craft is intact and because he's wisely jettisoned both the amphetamine rockabilly of the first album and the organ mysterioso of the second in favor of something more accessible. Armed Forces is actually a little pop tour de force, with the Attractions and producer Nick Lowe providing an irresistible sonic backdrop that generally allows you to overlook the fact that he's playing image games, being deliberately vague about what's bugging him. The give-away in that regard is the album's final track, an old Lowe tune from his Brinsley days called "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?." Its flower-child sentiments, transparently insincere when Lowe wrote the song as a genre exercise/exploitation piece, nonetheless get Elvis and the band excited enough that they turn it into a passionate, raging wall of sound. They sound so much like they mean it that you're not troubled by the double irony, and the song simply overpowers everything else on the album.
There's no question that Costello's next record is going to be crucial. On the basis of the new songs I saw him unveil in live performance recently, it's clear he can crank out brilliant pop forever, but I wonder how long he can pull off the Dylanesque myth-making he obviously aspires to. Especially now, with a revved-up Graham Parker nipping at his heels.
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