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The acclamations are rolling in for This Year's Model, and it's clear Elvis Costello is one of the brightest talents to emerge in quite a while.
Of all the people noncommercial enough to be termed New Ravers, Elvis has the widest reach — he can pull in the semi-sophisto Steely Dan-Springsteen crowd as well as keep the screaming mee-mee Sex Pistols-Ramones fans interested. This is quite a unique situation, but the core reason is simple: Elvis whips up his serious complaints in a tight, conventional, spirited rock 'n' roll manner. Inspired, lightning rock like Chuck Berry, the Beatles and the Who works because it sounds real, it makes sense, it fits, it hits.
Elvis hits all right, but on his terms. He's following his own instincts and ignoring the empty money games. He is an artist with a conscience and an understanding of what the new rules are in this modern world.
This Year's Model continues and expands upon the promise of My Aim Is True. Elvis has expanded the depth and intensity of his first album, giving us a more compact, more varied, more exciting and wilder album.
"I don't wanna kiss you, I don't wanna touch you," sings Elvis out of one speaker and KABOOOM, the band blows in and we're off and gone. Side one, cut one, "No Action" kicks off an instant ruckus with its torrid tempo. El sings coolly in front, but his band, The Attractions, is blowing holy rock 'n' roll smoke behind him. Their performance on the album, coupled with their live prowess, establishes them as equal to or better than most of the classic '60s ensembles like the Animals, Byrds, Kinks, Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. Only time will show if they can stay together long enough to challenge the peaks like the Who and Stones. Fully half of Elvis' success comes from his having a band as good as the Attractions to feed his songs to. The leaps and bounds they take in songs like "No Action" and "Lipstick Vogue" match the power, grace and verve of early-Who blistering songs like "Legal Matter" and "Out In The Street."
Not only does Elvis write songs with a wide-sounding appeal, but he's one of the few people in the entire swing of rock who can go from a whisper to a scream in writing songs. He can write a touching ballad and then turn it all up to a cracking, fast number. This Year's Model is replete with slow, medium and swift tunes, and clever time shifts in the middle of many of them.
Most of the songs here deal with love, and the messy, dirty time Elvis has had in the past. The overriding feature about Elvis Costello is that he's serious. He doesn't find much to grin at, and he seems to think this is certainly no time to be cute. He comes across as a cold fish, but his present seems to be spent searching for real people to talk to.
He's fighting against the commercially applied artifice of "This Year's Girl" (definitely not about Patti Smith, as one local malcontent has written), the stupidity of the situation of having fad women that drift in and out of our lives and postered walls, and the eminent dumbness and emptiness of the people who worship images. As the title says, the album is also occupied with the other fads, trends and models foisted on us by the powers that be. This machine makes people rich heroes one week and instant nobodies the next. Elvis has to deal with this uncertainty, and he's screaming to find out if any humanity can be communicated in this mass media latticework.
He's struggling vividly in "Lipstick Vogue." Dismayed to find a friend dolled up, he cries, "It's you, not just another mouth lost in lipstick vogue... Maybe you say I've got no feelings, well, this is a good way to kill them..."
Already many hail this as the album of the year. It's got a great shot — it'll take big hot stuff to top it. This Year's Model is a great record full of swaggering warnings and delights. Every cut is a keeper. At last we have a humanistic, responsible rocker with the power to reach us all.
(Consumer's Note: There's a large body of non-album Elvis music floating around on various 45s and collection records — more than a half hour's worth in fact. This situation is compounded in that while there's one song of the U.S. version of This Year's Model not on the British copy ("Radio, Radio"), and there're two extra songs on the UK album (including the great Dylan-like "Chelsea" and the Kafka-esque "Night Rally") along with a classier cover to boot. So get the English import if you've a choice, or at least buy the import 45 of "Chelsea.")
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