UT Daily Texan, August 6, 1982: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> 'Imperial Bedroom' a royal mansion of ideas </h3></center> | <center><h3> 'Imperial Bedroom' a royal mansion of ideas </h3></center> | ||
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<center> Chris Walters </center> | <center> Chris Walters </center> | ||
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'''Elvis Costello and the Attractions <br> | |||
Imperial Bedroom | |||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
A dense one, this. To properly evaluate E.C.'s new disc, one submitted to a dozen listenings, consulted various texts on semeiology, modernism, musicology and agoraphobia, exhaustively cross-referenced the lyrics with those on previous Costello albums and made a cursory check for backmasking. The hard-won conclusion: it's not bad. | A dense one, this. To properly evaluate E.C.'s new disc, one submitted to a dozen listenings, consulted various texts on semeiology, modernism, musicology and agoraphobia, exhaustively cross-referenced the lyrics with those on previous Costello albums and made a cursory check for backmasking. The hard-won conclusion: it's not bad. | ||
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Insanely prolific and gifted with an apparently inexhaustible sensibility, Costello is able to disguise thematic repetition beneath endlessly inventive wordplay and musical eclecticism. The difference here is mainly one of emphasis; he's always known about the indivisibility of the political and the personal, so he moves easily back and forth between the former — ''This Year's Model'' — and, on ''Imperial Bedroom'', the latter. More than ever, Costello's protean resentment is directed outward, but what he has to say to the Other in his world — ''"All I ever want is to fall into your human hands"'' is atypically vulnerable and heartfelt. For himm love means recognizing a diseased society's intrusion into private life and throwing off your chains. A simple idea, yet the best songs here delineate it with convincing complexity. | Insanely prolific and gifted with an apparently inexhaustible sensibility, Costello is able to disguise thematic repetition beneath endlessly inventive wordplay and musical eclecticism. The difference here is mainly one of emphasis; he's always known about the indivisibility of the political and the personal, so he moves easily back and forth between the former — ''This Year's Model'' — and, on ''Imperial Bedroom'', the latter. More than ever, Costello's protean resentment is directed outward, but what he has to say to the Other in his world — ''"All I ever want is to fall into your human hands"'' is atypically vulnerable and heartfelt. For himm love means recognizing a diseased society's intrusion into private life and throwing off your chains. A simple idea, yet the best songs here delineate it with convincing complexity. | ||
Musically, he goes for baroque, sacrificing melodic clarity too much of the time. Though he rarely overarranges the music to the point of making it entirely false, it's still overarranged, occasioning '' | Musically, he goes for baroque, sacrificing melodic clarity too much of the time. Though he rarely overarranges the music to the point of making it entirely false, it's still overarranged, occasioning the ''New York Times'' to [[New York Times, June 27, 1982|invoke]] silly comparisons with Cole Porter, when this is mainly just another instance of an ambitious songwriter cramming too many ideas together at once. | ||
But what the hell, the bespectacled runt still has his heart in the right place. | But what the hell, the bespectacled runt still has his heart in the right place. | ||
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{{Bibliography notes}} | {{Bibliography notes}} | ||
{{Bibliography next | |||
|prev = UT Daily Texan, January 27, 1981 | |||
|next = UT Daily Texan, September 9, 1983 | |||
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'''The Daily Texan, August 6, 1982 | '''The Daily Texan, August 6, 1982 | ||
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Latest revision as of 16:26, 7 April 2021
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