Penny Valentine's Letter From Britain focuses on Elvis Costello.
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Cover and page scan.
Christgau Consumer Guide
Elvis Costello
Armed Forces
(Columbia)
Like his predecessor, Bob Dylan, this ambitious tunesmith offers more as a phrase-maker than as an analyst or a poet, more as a public image than as a thinking, feeling person. He needs words because they add color and detail to his music. I like the more explicitly sociopolitical tenor here— "the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and The Times" evokes the conscripts in Her Majesty's Senior Service more directly than any lover he's inclined to pick on. But I don't find as many memorable bits of language as I did on This Year's Model. And though I approve of the more intricate pop constructions of the music, I found TYM's relentless nastiness of instrumental and (especially) vocal attack more compelling. A good record, to be sure, but not a great one. A-