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There are those of us who suspect the motives of rock's so-called New Wave. The whole thing came up too quickly, nicely packaged and ready to wear. It smells of hype and fad and a kind of impermanence that would shock even Mark Spitz.
There are, no doubt, New Wave musicians who will be remembered. They will be heard 20 years from now and win new converts. Just as Buddy Holly came out of nowhere to revamp the simple-minded '50s, just as the Beatles saved us from a decade of the Ronettes, someone in New Wave will pop up out of the cake and take over.
The first of those someones seems to be Elvis Costello. In a musical period which has the motto "Don't change the songs, change the titles," Costello has been incorporating new and different elements into his music.
His new album, Trust, has enough more-of-the-same-from-Elvis-C. cuts to sell the record, but he's doing some experimenting, too. He's added some reggae, some ballads. He seems to have realized that the thumpathumpathumpa guitar redundancies upon which most New Wave musicians rely so heavily do not make for easy, long-term listening.
It is very hard to concentrate, for example, through two sides of Dave Edmunds or even early Elvis Costello. It's almost as though the record has a scratch on it, and you just keep hearing the same thing over and over.
Costello has learned about pacing an album. He has his new stuff and he has his old stuff, and just when I thought I was going to have to skip a couple of songs something different, something new and interesting, came rolling out of the box.
I've been known to say that New Wave is nothing more than 1963 with a bad attitude and torn sneakers, and by and large I stand by that. But Costello's latest is changing my opinion; there is at least one serious musician out there. The move-the-product cynicism has not infested this entire generation of musicians.
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