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For the past four years, Elvis Costello has been responsible for what may be the most prodigious output of pop music ever. With and occasionally without his backup group, the Attractions, Costello has recorded and released 87 original songs, almost all of which have been critically praised.
What's fueled this extraordinary productivity and kept the product fresh has been Costello's ability to be a stylistic chameleon. Each of his studio albums has been a picture shot of a different pose, from My Aim Is True's Fifties archivist to This Year's Model's futuristic pop star, to Armed Forces' intellectual Phil Spector, to the soul music archeology of Get Happy! and finally the predominantly mid-tempo craftsmanship of last spring's Trust, which hearkened back to and recreated an image of Tin Pan Alley and cool sophistication. On the Taking Liberties collection of rarities, the stylistic range was a veritable panorama.
But Costello has been taking these pictures of himself and the person behind the camera, the crafty artist, has remained the same throughout: a young man with girl trouble, only occasionally being diverted into social commentary on songs like "Oliver's Army" and "Radio Radio". Costello has seen sexual relationships as eternally problematic, and has responded with what could have been a project of eternal analysis, peeling back the veils of romantic convention and forever reinterpreting what he found underneath.
It had to end sometime, which is what Costello's new album, Almost Blue, seems to be about. As most of those interested already know, Almost Blue is composed entirely of cover versions of sad country and western standards. On the record Costello puts the facts of a broken heart in a simple and restrained way. He hasn't written a line of this himself; it's as if he's finally concluded there are some things you just can't think your way clear of.
Almost Blue is as radical a stylistic shifting of gears as Costello has ever thrown at his audience, but the result is ironically conservative. Recorded in Nashville and produced by country establishment hitmaker Billy Sherrill, the album could be one which garners Costello massive success in North America, not as an innovator, but as an upscale MOR crooner.
The album, in its best moments, is likely to attract the attention of people who thought they would never listen to this sort of music. Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams"., Gram Parsons' "How Much I Lied" and producer Sherrill's "Too Far Gone" are wonderful ballads, immaculately performed by the Attractions and an old. hand from the My Aim is True. "Radio Sweetheart" and "Stranger in the House" sessions, pedal steel guitarist John McFee. If one accepts what Costello is doing here, the only weak points are the odd attempts to rock out on Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me(Like You Used to Do)" and L. Turner's "Honey Hush", which seem to suffer from Sherrill's Nashville straitjacket and never quite get off the ground.
Almost Blue is neither as challenging nor as ultimately rewarding as Costello's original work, although a pleasure in its own way. The album may mark an important change in Costello's way of doing things; the prodigy who once promised he wouldn't be "Around to witness my own decline" seems to have suffered the toll of his labours. Well short of age 30, the once-wiry rocker is bloated and balding; in short, a physical wreck. Whether or not he returns to his trailblazing ways, he seems at the very least to need the kind of rest that Almost Blue affords him.
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