|
Elvis Costello's latest is a fairly irritating album. Stylistically, the music is a bland amalgam of cabaret, reggae, and r-&-b, but the melodies, such as they are, are very nearly as tortured and ugly as the worst of early Seventies art-rock or fusion. Costello's singing, meanwhile, has lapsed into purest David Bowie hambone; he sounds freeze-dried. The emotions are built in, rather than felt, and his phrasing is on automatic pilot, with the passion obviously programmed. True, he retains his flair for word-play, but, mostly, the cleverness is there to deflect any potential emotional involvement on the part of the listener, and the effect is most unpleasant.
|
