Elvis Costello's latest effort is, to say the least, baroque. From stunning instrumentation (layers of many seldom-used musical instruments) to his trademark wordplay, Costello has once again "created." He's pressed the vinyl with thick and lush sounds that slide out of the woofers and tweeters like so much champagne.
Goodbye Cruel World's songs run the gamut. Horns and saxes blare in the soul ambience of "The Only Flame in Town," while the Twilight Zone lyrics and popping dance rhythms all wrap around signature minor chords in "Room with No Number."
Costello writes so many good songs that it's almost a shock when he lays an egg between gems on any album, and the filler tunes are here in force. Some of side one's slow, plodding organs and at times uninspired vocals leave one a bit droopy-eyed. But the force of the compositions, sharp-edged lyrics and incredible production (listen closely to these tunes, you'll hear some amazing "throw-away" sounds) still make for standouts. He takes aim against stardom and Presley worship in "Worthless Thing" and American pop sensibilities in "Deportees Club": "I pray to the saints and all the martyrs / for the secret life of Frank Sinatra / but none of these things have come to pass / In America the law's a piece of ass." And this from a man with a hit single!
"I Wanna Be Loved" opens to the tropical, sensuous beats of a summer night in the Caribbean. Steve Nieve's mysterious organ floats in and out of focus as Costello's pleading vocals ask the eternal question, "Why must I be so lonely?"
Side two preoccupies itself with another of Costello's latest obsessions, politics. From the lilting tone of lost loved-ones in "Joe Porterhouse" to the direct shots tossed at Margaret Thatcher on "The Great Unknown," Costello takes on the British post-Falklands war machine in a bravely direct way, far more explicitly than he did on last year's beautiful "Shipbuilding," a collaboration with Robert Wyatt.
The final song, "Peace in our Time," is possibly Costello's most startlingly breathtaking and socially relevant work to date: "Meanwhile there's a light over the ocean burning brighter than the sun / and a man sits alone in a bar and says 'Oh God, what have we done?'"
Goodbye Cruel World is a masterpiece, similar in many respects to 1982's Imperial Bedroom, a disc that supposedly heralded a "changed" Costello (trading in the sneer for a sad-eyed croon). But the force of songs such as "The Deportees Club" and "Sour Milk-Cow Blues," driving beats, rhythms and screams seem more characteristic of the chain smoking, mad-as-hell nightclub singer of Trust and Get Happy. Costello continues to progress, and popular music continues to be the better for it.
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