|
For someone who's spent his entire professional career being as sarcastic and oblique as possible, it's ironic to hear Elvis Costello singing the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."
In fact, as rock's cleverest wordsmith and pundit, Costello has probably been misunderstood quite a bit. He apparently doesn't mind, though, because his new LP, King of America, is as full as ever of the intellectual tap-dancing for which Costello's fans respect him.
Musically, the album is a surprise. The bearded Costello on the jacket has begun using his real name, Declan Patrick MacManus, and has moved his 10-year-old band, the Attractions, aside for session players he calls the Confederates. With them, he has crafted a calm, low-key album of American roots music — blues, folk, country and western, rockabilly, a little swing. Though Costello has done country before, he seems far more serious about exploring different forms on King of America, and the result is pleasing.
Most immediately accessible is the Animals cover, on which Costello transforms the defiance of the original into a desperate, bluesy plaint for forgiveness.
Around it, he builds songs about people who either need forgiveness themselves or will soon. In the past, Costello has been the main angry character of his stories, as he's ranted bitterly from the punk's perspective about the way people enjoy trashing one another.
On King of America, he's detached from the action. If there is actually a king anywhere on this record, it must be the distant observer who watches these sad people from afar, but never gets involved with them; in that respect, I suppose, he's the sorriest of them all.
But he's got some stiff competition for the honor, from the death-row inmate in "Suit of Lights" to the abusive crew in "Brilliant Mistake." The man and woman in "Indoor Fireworks" love one another but fight to the point that they know they'll fall apart, but will never get over one another. "I'll build a bonfire of my dreams / And burn a broken effigy of me and you," Costello sings.
The woman in "Sleep of the Just" sees her prides in her chastity mocked when she falls in love with a soldier who turns her into a barracks pin-up.
The loser in "Our Little Angel" is the poor woman who wants to be loved but can only spurn, so that she has a "collection of engagement rings on her right hand." She's only a little more honorable than the old madam in "Glitter Gulch" who has to listen to her miserable customers put down what few dreams she has.
"American Without Tears" is the sad story of a GI who brings home a British bride from World War II. Forty years later, the ingrown bitterness over their cultural differences keeps them from communicating even though they speak the same language: "It seems we've been crying for years and years / Now I don't speak any English / Just American without tears."
This tear-stained cast of characters wore thin quickly on some critics who panned this record as maudlin. I refuse to turn my back on Costello that easily, for he's demonstrated his brilliance all too often in the past. I think King of America, by its title, serves as this cynical Englishman's response to the glut of patriotic puff that has filled our airwaves since Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. was misunderstood as fist-waving jingoism.
Costello, as he tells us, says he doesn't want to be misunderstood, but he's kidding. Actually, he's kept us guessing once again by named his LP after America and using our native music to gleefully shine his light into a few of our darker corners.
| 
