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Beyond Belief
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Paul Pearson
One-chorus wonders
Costello's Imperial Bedroom album unofficially launched the second wave of his career when he boxed out whatever style limits he and The Attractions had over their first five albums (not including the country drop-off Almost Blue). The opening track signaled more than just a musical shift. Rushing through the lyrics like grocery items in the express lane, Costello overlaps the ends of some stanzas with the beginnings of other ones; a proper chorus would have blunted the effect. It also plays like a checklist of the behaviors and puns some of the would-be Casanovas in his previous songs might have employed, as if he's tossing them into an accordion file one by one: "I hang around dying to be tortured / You'll never be alone in the bone orchard," "Charged with insults and flattery / Her body moves with malice / Do you have to be so cruel to be callous?" With the drunken dissatisfaction of "Clubland" out of the way, he checks in with the resolving chorus — "I've got a feeling / I'm gonna get a lot of grief / Once this seemed so appealing / Now I am beyond belief" — and consigns the lounge lizard to the scrapbook. He then continues with a sprawling album about the fibers of a more restrained domestic life, and all the trouble one can get into from the safety of their own home.
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