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In the space of four months now we have been treated to two superb albums from Elvis Costello. December's My Aim Is True (Columbia) proved to be one of 1977's best recordings. This Year's Model (Columbia), Costello's newest, just may prove to be one of this year's best.
While the new disc breaks no new ground for the Buddy Holly-esque young man from England, it does mark a continuation of the strong writing and performing that made My Aim Is True a masterpiece.
Nick Lowe's production is restrained and tasteful, allowing Costello and his three-man band to continue the hard-driving, pure-rock course that they charted with the first United States album (and earlier on the Stiff label).
Thematically, Costello continues to explore the shaggy underbelly of youthful frustration, resentment and paranoia that he examined with such urgency in the first disc. Musically, he sticks fairly close to the orthodox rock devices that made the first disc such a refreshing change from the lifeless heavy-metal inanities that had marked much of 1970s rock.
The songs display all the punch and vitality that characterized our first taste of Costello-iana: On the album's opener, "No Action," he describes the anguish of a love/hate relationship that has him calling a girl on the phone only when he knows she won't be home, but lamenting, "I don't wanna see you, 'cause I don't miss you that much."
On "Little Triggers" be reminds a girlfriend about "the little triggers that you pull with your tongue," then chides her for "worrying about the common decency when it's only a matter of frequency."
Undercurrents of violent rage combined with traces of voyeurism from the first album, mark "Living in Paradise." An obviously violently resentful Costello warns, "I don't like those other guys looking at your curves. I don't like you walking around with physical jerks ... they'll find out all the dogs outside bite much worse than they bark."
On "Lipstick Vogue" he protests. "You wanna throw me away but I'm not broken ... sometimes I feel almost like a human being."
The album's closer is "Radio, Radio," one of the songs Costello did on Saturday Night Live. In anguished rage, Costello describes his attachment to the radio both as a source of escape and as a source of inspiration. "Every one of those late-night stations playing songs that brought tears to my eyes ... I wanna bite the hand that feeds me." He chides "some of my friends [who] sit around in the evening and worry about the things ahead," then warns that the radio is bringing both salvation and destruction, offering his listeners a choice of what it will be for them.
Costello's music may not have broken through to local radio listeners, but his fans are increasing and it's only a matter of time until be receives the exposure and recognition that he deserves as one of the freshest things to happen to rock in decades.
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