"Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

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Jack of All Parades
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"Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

"Imperial Bedroom" capped for me what was a perfect trifecta of albums from the early 80's["Get Happy" and "Trust" being the others]. I remember that summer of '82 and how this record rarely left my turntable. Its sonic exuberance, lyrical adventurousness and thematic density held my interest totally from my first playing of side one on 7/2/1982 and still does today. It is the work of a young 'artist' stuffed with words[my favorite visual metaphor is the lyric sheet from the album with its typeface jammed and continuously running on the page]; a confident lyricist having fun with words and melody and the technical tricks of the studio as aided and guided by Geoff Emerick. Metaphors and puns spill from the grooves and merge with a melange of sounds and instrumentation and background vocal effects that never sound stale or dated with each passing year.

As in all successful EC albums for me it also deals with the universal theme of pop music- love and its travails. Relationships have gone awry. People are cheating on one another: not talking, not relating, sneaking around town on illicit rendezvous. I still get a chill when I hear what I take to be a thematic summing line "How wrong can I be before I am right". I always love the ten commandments of love as evoked in "Pidgin English" with its ironic echoing p.s. I love you. EC's songwriting never got more sophisticated than this record.

I also love the singing he accomplished in these songs. The vocal swoops and tricks that can be found on songs like "Beyond Belief", "Almost Blue", "Boy With a Problem", "Kid About It", "Shabby Doll" and "Town Cryer" are exhilarating to repeatedly hear. He learned on this album to stretch a line vocally, playing with the lines and syllables-I love the trick he does in "Town Cryer" where cryer becomes a five syllable word as he sings the song. "Man Out of Time" with its ending chorus " Love is always scarpering or cowering or fawning/You drink yourself insensitive and hate/yourself in the morning" has always best summed up this wonderful record for me.

Even the album title is a strong metaphor for me with its majestic analogy to the notion of love as built up in people's minds by modern era pop music. EC's admission that he had come into the record having been aurally fueled by the music of late Billie Holiday, Miles's "Round About Midnight" and Sinatra's "In the Wee Small Hours" is telling. Equally telling is his solicitation of Sammy Cahn to try to write with- I can only guess at how clever and playful those songs might have been. This is the last great album for me until "Painted From Memory", ironically a successful collaboration with another pop master. It was, is, and will continue to be for me a supremely intelligent, witty, reflective and introspective study of how men and women relate to one another; of the pain and physical and psychological damage we cause one another in the pursuit of the "Imperial Bedroom".
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Hawksmoor »

And it is, if we can believe this month's Mojo, Brett Easton Ellis' favourite Costello LP. Which is worth something, I guess.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Poor Deportee »

Well, I like IB. It contains two of his very finest moments in 'Beyond Belief' and 'Almost Blue' - the former being something akin to his 'Strawberry Fields Forever,' inasmuch as it represents a fascinating kind of musical tone poem totally unlike anything else, the latter possibly being his most polished accomplishment as a writer and the EC song most likely to outlive us all. Taken as a whole, though, I find that there's something slightly distancing about the album. It may be that it's a record where *craft* to some extent supplants emotional urgency.

Contrast IB with King of America - another oft-cited contender for the title of 'Costello's Best Album' - and you might see what I mean here. KOA brings a formidable set of songwriting powers and craft and turns it in service of material with a tremendous emotional force, powerhouse stuff that seems to be pouring out of the singer of its own accord. IB always struck me as more cerebrally crafted and hence a tad detatched. The decidedly 'cool' production ethos furthers that effect and sometimes works against the force of the songs ('Kid About It' being exhibit A, the studio version coming nowhere near the power of the song when performed live). In fact, you could make the argument that this is the first glimpse of an Elvis Costello with whom we'd become more familiar in the 1990s, ie., one whose work invites more admiration than really passionate engagement. But I wouldn't want to press that case too far - it is, after all, quite a good record.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by docinwestchester »

Is there a better lyric than: "So what if this is a man's world, I want to be a kid again about it..." ?

In the context of that song, that line just kills me every time.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD, I have always found IB exceedingly engaging for me both by way of admiration for the craft utilized in its construction and for the passion I found in the songwriting. Not my favorite record["Get Happy" will have that place] but a record that will always have a place on my turntable. It is quite frankly his most sophisticated study of human male/female relations for my ears and caps a run with "Get Happy" and "Trust" that explored the sexes and their interactions in a smart and scathing manner. I have always admired how he is never afraid to turn that introspection inward to his own behaviors. "Almost Blue", as for you, is for me his supreme song and I have always liked that it is placed on this record. The 'cerebral' quality you cite is something that keeps me always coming back to the album; KOA is the exact opposite for me, something that always seemed to my ears 'cerebrally crafted and hence a tad detached'. There are only three songs on that record that I return to with regularity- "Indoor Fireworks", "Suit of Lights" and "Jack of All Parades". But that is just the way I listen. KOA has always struck me as EC trying to be a master of folk and it always comes off as 'craft' and lacks the emotional and intellectual energy and musical power I consistently find in IB but again that is just how I listen to the work.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Emotional Toothpaste »

Both very good works, just different. IB is rarely in my rotation these days though, vs. KOA, especially the 2-disc version of KOA has a LOT more to offer than IB's fairly similar group of songs and explores far more than just folk (elements of New Orleans jazz, some blues, folk and country, yes, but some Elvis Presley rockabilly and a touch of punk attitude. I tend to agree with the IB being a bit overwrought in places. A little synthetic here and there, and a little too poppy-orchestral schmaltzy -- borderline Musack and overproduced? It has not aged as well as KOA, in my opinion.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by charliestumpy »

We too like IB, and used to play it a lot from vinyl. We must play again soon the 2nd CD version we bought with the bonus disc.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Ypsilanti »

Emotional Toothpaste wrote:Both very good works, just different. IB is rarely in my rotation these days though, vs. KOA, especially the 2-disc version of KOA has a LOT more to offer than IB's fairly similar group of songs and explores far more than just folk (elements of New Orleans jazz, some blues, folk and country, yes, but some Elvis Presley rockabilly and a touch of punk attitude. I tend to agree with the IB being a bit overwrought in places. A little synthetic here and there, and a little too poppy-orchestral schmaltzy -- borderline Musack and overproduced? It has not aged as well as KOA, in my opinion.
Yes--agree. Took me a long time & a lot of attempts at listening to it to make peace with IB. Much like Trust, there are still a few songs I tend to skip (Boy With A Problem, Tears Before Bedtime, Little Savage, Pidgin English). Having not heard IB in full until many years after it first came out, I guess I also found it a bit dated and over-produced. The songs seem to have been polished to the point of being expensive, elegant, beautifully-crafted products. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but I find KOA a lot more welcoming.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Poor Deportee »

Ypsilanti wrote:
Emotional Toothpaste wrote:Both very good works, just different. IB is rarely in my rotation these days though, vs. KOA, especially the 2-disc version of KOA has a LOT more to offer than IB's fairly similar group of songs and explores far more than just folk (elements of New Orleans jazz, some blues, folk and country, yes, but some Elvis Presley rockabilly and a touch of punk attitude. I tend to agree with the IB being a bit overwrought in places. A little synthetic here and there, and a little too poppy-orchestral schmaltzy -- borderline Musack and overproduced? It has not aged as well as KOA, in my opinion.
Yes--agree. Took me a long time & a lot of attempts at listening to it to make peace with IB. Much like Trust, there are still a few songs I tend to skip (Boy With A Problem, Tears Before Bedtime, Little Savage, Pidgin English). Having not heard IB in full until many years after it first came out, I guess I also found it a bit dated and over-produced. The songs seem to have been polished to the point of being expensive, elegant, beautifully-crafted products. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but I find KOA a lot more welcoming.
Well, didn't EC himself say somewhere (Rolling Stone?) that he felt a lot of the songs on IB 'weren't well written enough' and mildly criticize the attempt to 'create little mystery rooms' for the listener? Not that an artist is necessarily the best judge of his own work, but it does suggest that Elvis more or less agrees with this assessment. My own list of songs that leave me cold on that particular album would include 'The Loved Ones' and 'And in Every Home' along with a couple that are solid constructions but ultimately fail to elicit much response, such as 'Pidgin English' and 'You Little Fool.' I also think that EC was right to repudiate the production trickery on 'Kid About It,' a serious blemish on a major song in my opinion. On reflection, it's the second side of the LP that tends wilt a bit. So - specifics aside - I'm with you.

As for passion, it seems to me that there's nothing on IB that can match the force of the final five songs on KOA - possibly the best sequence of songs in Elvis's entire canon. Add to that the garment-rending desperation of 'I'll Wear It Proudly,' and you've got a half-dozen songs that seem to cut truly close to the bone. There's nothing distancing about that material. In fact, the reason I don't listen to KOA even more than I do is that, like Blood and Chocolate, it's almost too emotionally demanding, especially toward the end...whereas I occasionally put IB on my dinner party platter. The contrast speaks for itself.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Neil. »

I've found an old thread about the album, in case anyone wants to read my warblings about it!

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... errated%3F

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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Ypsilanti »

Neil. wrote:I've found an old thread about the album, in case anyone wants to read my warblings about it!

http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... errated%3F

Neil
Neil,
As usual, when it comes to discussing the music, I should just stand back and let you do it and then say, "Same as what he said". Loved your "warblings". Very nicely put. Couldn't agree more. :)
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Neil, you taught me one thing and that is to explore the back threads more-had I known this thread existed I would have simply tacked my small post to the thread- will have to explore more given the time.

Agree more with Wardo, Alexv and PD when it comes to this album. This record is one of the rare instances where it is a solid collection of songs on one album, in total, in EC's catalog. This is intelligent, engaging material that merits repeated listens, something I have repeatedly done since 1982 and will continue to do. I truly believe it is a timeless look at human relations between the sexes.

The bonus for me is the singing he accomplishes on the record. He is able to experiment, stretch lines and play with syllables in ways that still engage my ears. He uses his voice to effectively counterpoint himself in the songs and comment on the action in a given lyric. I am sorry you cannot hear this. We are often tone deaf to other's likes as I am to one of yours, SP&S. I am appreciative that he had the chance to work in the studio and enhance his material with strong arrangements and invigorating musical instrumentation. I have never cared for comparisons with predecessors. For me this album resonates because of the sophistication of the material both aurally and verbally and for the unblinking inward analytical nature of the songs.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Neil. »

Thanks Yps! Chris, yes, agreed - the album still has amazing things to offer, despite my reservations!
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by sheeptotheslaughter »

Imperial Bedroom is one my favourite Elvis albums and one I do return to. But then again with the exception of Goodbye Cruel World I loved all the albums up to the end of the nineties. King Of America I find a 'trying' album to listen to. It's heavy going and emotional as no other album in my collection. I do love it though and is in my favourite Elvis albums as well.

I struggle with the more 'americana' aspect of the later works. Bits of the Delivery Man and the last record leave me cold. Though I am really looking forward to National Ransom.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by alexv »

So, it’s 1982. I’ve been an EC fan for a few years. Have loved every record, but I’m sensing something. After the Ray Charles incident, my boy has become defensive (wouldn’t you?). Get Happy is a great, rocking record, but the sudden immersion in “soul” music, coming when it does, strikes my cocky, judgmental 20-something self as a calculated gesture, and I don’t like it. Then Trust comes along and my initial reaction was somewhat negative. Cluttered songs, and those lyrics sprinkled here and there about our Boy being unfairly targeted etc. I smelled the dreaded “artistic crisis” moment. Then he runs off to do country. I like the songs, but again it struck me then as a sign of desperation, another calculated attempt at...apologizing to America by explicitly, and even in spite of Billy Sherrill, professing his love for our music.

And along comes IB. And the lyrics are printed on the sleeve!! No need for the Rhyming Dictionary (I treasure that book). My friend and I were supposed to be studying for the Bar that summer, and we attended lectures designed to help us pass it. Instead of paying attention, we would spend our time poring over the lyric sleeve (just one big run-on-sentence) analyzing, bullshitting about it, justr like I'm doing now when I should be working (I failed the Bar exam that summer). We see him in concert that summer at Forest Hills on a spectacular August evening and all is right with the world.

The New York Times comes out with a review: EC is the new Gershwin. I’m walking to work and outside a record store (remember them?) I see a poster for the album “Masterpiece?”. This is our geeky, wild-eyed, EC folks are talking about here!!. He’s dropped Nick for the Beatles engineer; he’s writing “proper” pop songs. Songs have “arrangements”. Can you say Lennon and McCartney?

So, as I listened to the songs my appreciation was affected by all of this, and by the fact that I was 25, out of law school, making money, in love, on my own and insanely happy. This record was my musical companion. I was starting my grown up life and coming along with me for the ride was what seemed to be a new grown up, serious EC. Forget rebellion, let’s emulate the classics. Let’s work within the system, and make it better. Show the grown-ups that I can play their game and play it well.

There were only a couple of songs that bothered me, as I recall. And in Every Home, Pidgin English and Fool. Everything else was golden. The initial sequence (for the purpose of this memory exercise, I’m going by memory): BB, Tears, Shabby, Honeymoon, Man out of Time and AB was pop perfection. I still think there is no better sequence of EC songs. BB was, at the time, un-categorizable and the best first line of any EC song; Tears was a fabulous melody and we got introduced to the new arrangements/instruments/pop song craft; Shabby Doll was practically jazz, good melodic jazz, for Christ’s sake!!; Honeymoon was another side of the Tears treatment and a pop gem and then Man out of Time came on with the scream and admittedly overwrought arrangement, but what a punch it packed. It seemed epic to me, whatever the hell that was. It was overdone and inscrutable (does that define a lot of what our Hero is about?), but it was his Born to Run. And then…AB. This was Sinatra Elvis, good Sinatra Elvis. This has turned out to be his most covered song, for a reason. We had gotten an inkling of this Elvis (he covered Valentine and he did Shot on Trust) but AB was truly revolutionary, at the time.

I didn’t like the next song, and jumped to the next sequence: Loved Ones, Human Hands. Was never impressed by the lyrics of these two, but loved the music, the melody, the playing, the piano. Sophisticated music rang out in my yuppie head. And I liked it. Not quite sure what he’s on about but I liked it.

And then the next sequence: Kid, Little Savage, BAP. Great lyrics and music and melody and the whole shebang. Tuneful, sing along songs. Agreed that Kid’s production was, like a lot of the record, a little over the top. But, again, at the time, that was part of the charm, the initial appeal to all these songs. There was ambition here, mad ambition, sometimes overreaching ambition, but it settled a lot of my fears, that someone whose music had connected so strongly with me was going off the rails, getting self-conscious, defensive. Instead, he was going for the brass ring. I’m going to make you forget my Ray Charles comments. You will have to put up with me, because I’m in this for the brass ring, for the long haul, to make great music.

Then I skipped Pidgin and Fool. Never crazy about these two. Too whiny and not enough melody. And the finale. Here again you have to transport yourself back in time. Town Cryer (another song, like Kid, that EC probably thinks was overdone) was revolutionary. As much as BB was a revolutionary album opener, TC was revolutionary for an ender. The strings, the singing, the theme (the lyric bothered me a bit since it had a tinge of the “please forgive me, my heart is in the right place” vibe as a defense to the Ray Charles thing) were, at the time, astounding for us EC fans. Think Day in the Life.

Is IB EC’s greatest record? I think most would agree it’s a contender. Is it his most revolutionary record (have I used "revolutionary" enough times? you get my IB-inspired overwrought point?) I would argue that it is. Coming as it did, and when it did, it marked EC as someone special. I would argue that over the years, the implications of IB have resulted in lots of EC songs that smack of preciousness and self-consciousness and that what it signaled therefore was not all that great. But that’s debatable and overall I think IB’s impact is more positive than negative. There are other EC records I love (like GH, TYM, AF, GH, KOA, PFM and PTC) and I can argue their merits until the cows come home. But no record, for lots of reasons I’ve laid out, some of them having nothing to do with the music itself, had the impact that IB had.

And that is my larger point, which I’m sure has been stated a million times before: what we think of a work of art depends on lots of factors, most of them related to timing. In the end, I suspect, we claim special affection for those things that connect with us at the most propitious of times. IB is that record for me.

A couple of words about KOA, another great EC record. Like IB, there are only a few songs I did not like (Glitter Gulch, Misunderstood, Little Palaces, EBlues). The rest are some of EC’s greatest songs. The stripped down, almost folk arrangements are a stark contrast to IB, obviously. And the absence of The Attractions on everything but the great Suit of Lights is a weakness (IMO). But it’s a great record. I found the whole beard, Declan, I’m going to record with great musicians all over America, and isn’t it amazing that Ray Brown is on my record thing bothersome at the time, and it colored my affection for the record. It did lead to one of my all-time favorite EC moments though: I had gotten a James Carr record and loved his version of Pouring Water, and, out of nowhere it seemed, at his Broadway show, EC does it. And the same night he covers the Buddy Holly song I had chosen for my wedding. Magical.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Neil. »

Alex V, what an amazing piece!

I realise now what this album must have meant to' longtime Elvis fans at the time of its release. I got into Elvis after the event (I discovered Elvis in '83 - a year late for IB), so I hadn't previously appreciated the impact it had on stalwarts who were there from the start. You've conveyed, with eloquent passion, what it felt like. Bloody amazing piece of writing - thanks v much.

This whole thread has made me want to revisit the album, on headphones, in the dark. Too late to do so tonight, but am going to v. soon. Elvis is king!

Nx

P.S. Despite loving your account, I have to stand up for 'You Little Fool' - surely it's a pop masterpiece. How can you say it's got no melody?!
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by docinwestchester »

I was a teenager in the 70's, and grew up relishing each new EC album, buying each record on the release day, starting with Armed Forces up through Goodbye Cruel World. Since I can't write anything nearly as eloquent as alexv, I'll just vouch for the sentiment that hearing these records when they were brand new was an integral part of my early adulthood. And IB totally blew me away when I listened for the first time. From EC's opening countdown to start BB (barely audible, even with headphones) to his crooning "tra-gic-ly hiiiiip" to close Town Cryer, I loved every note. Still do.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Ypsilanti »

Yeah, seriously, Alex...that was amazing. Thank you. I wish I could have heard IB like that.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Alex, have been meaning to get this in here for some time as it relates to your experience with the album complete with my memory of reading the same piece in the Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/27/arts/ ... op?&st=cse

Palmer captured at the time for me my feelings about this album. They are still my feelings about this record. As Palmer quotes EC when asked if he is the Cole Porter of the 1980s? "That kind of songwriting-Porter, Kern, Rodgers and Hart- is something I'm very fond of and aspire to. When people ask me to name a great song, I mention something like "Love for Sale" of "Someone to Watch Over Me". In the last twenty years or so, very few people have been up to that standard of lyric writing." Palmer notes that EC's best work examines the "ups and downs of romance in a wryly epigrammatic style that was unflinchingly adult". I had been hooked from day one. So was Palmer and then came "Imperial Bedroom". Palmer notes its being a decisive step forward for EC as an artist. It is " a conscious attempt to get away from rock entirely, to write pop songs worthy of a Sinatra or an Ella Fitzgerald, the sort of pop songs that become standards". Palmer flat out says "the music ranges from sultry supper club balladry to brightly baroque counterpoint for strings and french horns to restaurant table serenades featuring accordion and gut-string guitar. Mr. Costello's singing has never sounded better, but above all Imperial Bedroom is a songwriter's tour de force." I could not have said it better in summing up the impact of this record.

I have always loved the internal rhymes and alliteration that fill the songs. These are songs in total that are suffused with a new "emotional maturity" as noted by Palmer. As EC told him in an interview "I don't think of the new album as a rock & roll record. I was making a conscious effort to remove the dominance of the beat. The important things to me are the melody, the words, the way you sing them, all the little innuendos you can get into them. And above all the feeling behind them." What is most telling are EC's own words-"I do tend to think there's a lot of decadence and moral weakness among people in positions of power. Traditionally, the aristocracy in England has been decadent and immoral. There's always a lot of intrigue, government scandals, like the Profumo affair. None of my songs are literally about that or any other particular event, but some of them have that flavor. The more personal songs are either imaginary scenarios, observations of other people, or observations of myself. Most of the really vitriolic songs I've written have been observations of myself."

A final observation in the piece is quite telling. EC notes that Porter and others primarily wrote for the stage. EC states he has no such ambitions. "What am I going to do, write a rock opera? Rock musicals, rock films, they are pathetic, a joke. So there is really just continuing the songwriting, honing that, doing it better. If you write pop songs, you do hope they will be important to people's lives. I'd love for one of my songs to be as important to someone as "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" by the Temptations was to me. But I hate this precious idea that every song has to be the Sermon on the Mount. The songs I write for my next album will be about whatever happens to me between now and when we start recording again, and that's what it's about, really. It's about life."

How true then though I am not so certain now. "Almost Blue" is that important song for me. However over the years I have come to feel that EC has veered from his original intent as a songwriter. The lines have expanded to bloat; the subjects have become more remote and artificially crafted and impersonal and have lost a great deal of emotional immediacy for me. Artists can change: listeners should too, I suppose. As I scan many of the new songs lyrically I am depressed. It will always be difficult to forget the high water mark this album left.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Poor Deportee »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote: "Almost Blue" is that important song for me. However over the years I have come to feel that EC has veered from his original intent as a songwriter. The lines have expanded to bloat; the subjects have become more remote and artificially crafted and impersonal and have lost a great deal of emotional immediacy for me. Artists can change: listeners should too, I suppose. As I scan many of the new songs lyrically I am depressed. It will always be difficult to forget the high water mark this album left.
Well, I don't know about the last part. I think you lose a lot 'scanning songs lyrically.' Even a lot of Dylan lyrics don't read all that impressively; you have to take the song as a whole piece. (Unless by 'scan,' you mean 'listen to' - but that doesn't seem to be what you're implying here).

Most of us would probably agree that EC hasn't been at his absolute peak for a while now, although there'd be a lot of disagreement over when *exactly* that peak was achieved. My own sense is that his career has re-acquired some of the momentum that it lost, for me, from about Kojak Variety to North. Otherwise put, he seems to be rolling into the studio with greater urgency to record strong batches of songs rather than the endless train of collaborations and Concept Pieces that marked the earlier phase. The Delivery Man, Momofuku, and SPSC are all lively, varied and sophisticated sets with a lot going for them on all fronts, even if they aren't quite as suave as IB. Now I know you dislike SPSC, but first, the music simply sounds delicious - I just love those percussion-less, rich acoustic tones, and I think sometimes we can intellectualize ourselves out of just plain enjoying the ear candy; and I continue to find songs 7-13 consistently transporting, opening up their own strange little baroque lost worlds. In my view, the critique of these songs has to come less from a sense of their inadequacies as compositions (which is not to say they're uniformly flawless) than from a bias either against the subject matter ('remote,' 'artificial' - but these songs are basically historical-romantic short stories, which you either you roll with or don't), or else the 'bluegrass' sound. Such biases are legitimate preferences, but I'm not sure they constitute a critique of the songs per se.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD, most perceptive, particularly as you have picked up on my genetic distaste for bluegrass[and Polka for that matter, although I think there is little danger that EC will venture into that genre]. That aside will go with a winning percentage of 2 out of 3 or .633[pardon my numbers but I am so rapped up with the playoffs] leaving off SP&S, as you say. Agree totally with you that biases, though perhaps legitimate preferences, are not valid critiques. Agree need the music with the words, as well. That is why I have always approached my discussion from the standpoint of looking at the compositions along with the music, which falls flat for me, but which I full well know resonates for many others, including yourself[ I do not hear that ear candy on this particular disc]. The scanning for me involves both the written word and the music in which those words are housed. Unfortunately, I have only had the youtube clips to go by and full well know they do not reflect the finished sound of the new record[which I am excited to hear as anything that can use Marc Ribot and Leon Russell and Buddy Miller, for starters, has my ears perked]. Will argue the words alone merit scanning. I think enough of his lyric ability to do that. Besides why would he post them on his site well ahead of the album's release? Do tend to over intellectualize my listening and reading; I think too much of EC as an artist to do any less.

My dismay has been exacerbated by a recent re acquaintance with the work of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost and their clean, modulated lines done in 'real' speech. I have been tainted by them and tantalized and have a strong preference for their line as opposed to EC's Swinburne Edwardian excess of late.

Wish I had read the recent interview posted by Mr. Foyle earlier in the Ransom thread. I have to agree with EC- I know nothing about what he does and he need not nor will he listen to my kind or any other writer within this forum. But I do know how hard it is to do what he does, having tried my own hand at lyric writing. However I think he is wrong when he says we have no right to talk about his work. On a certain level it is just babel but when heightened by intelligent listening like yours often times valid points and criticisms can be made.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Poor Deportee »

Christopher Sjoholm wrote:PD, most perceptive, particularly as you have picked up on my genetic distaste for bluegrass[and Polka for that matter, although I think there is little danger that EC will venture into that genre]. That aside will go with a winning percentage of 2 out of 3 or .633[pardon my numbers but I am so rapped up with the playoffs] leaving off SP&S, as you say. Agree totally with you that biases, though perhaps legitimate preferences, are not valid critiques. Agree need the music with the words, as well. That is why I have always approached my discussion from the standpoint of looking at the compositions along with the music, which falls flat for me, but which I full well know resonates for many others, including yourself[ I do not hear that ear candy on this particular disc]. The scanning for me involves both the written word and the music in which those words are housed. Unfortunately, I have only had the youtube clips to go by and full well know they do not reflect the finished sound of the new record[which I am excited to hear as anything that can use Marc Ribot and Leon Russell and Buddy Miller, for starters, has my ears perked]. Will argue the words alone merit scanning. I think enough of his lyric ability to do that. Besides why would he post them on his site well ahead of the album's release? Do tend to over intellectualize my listening and reading; I think too much of EC as an artist to do any less.

My dismay has been exacerbated by a recent re acquaintance with the work of Edward Thomas and Robert Frost and their clean, modulated lines done in 'real' speech. I have been tainted by them and tantalized and have a strong preference for their line as opposed to EC's Swinburne Edwardian excess of late.

Wish I had read the recent interview posted by Mr. Foyle earlier in the Ransom thread. I have to agree with EC- I know nothing about what he does and he need not nor will he listen to my kind or any other writer within this forum. But I do know how hard it is to do what he does, having tried my own hand at lyric writing. However I think he is wrong when he says we have no right to talk about his work. On a certain level it is just babel but when heightened by intelligent listening like yours often times valid points and criticisms can be made.
I surely agree that there's nothing wrong with 'intellectualizing' (i.e., reflecting upon) art that we enjoy or don't enjoy. In fact I condemn the attitude that would attack this as 'nerdish' or somehow perverse; it's part of being a thoughtful human being, and EC should be gratified rather than perturbed by the fact that many people engage his work with the same combination of heart and mind that he himself deploys in engaging the work of others.

The real root of our disagreement over SP &S, Christopher, probably does indeed come back to how we respond to the sheer sound of the album. I absolutely love that sound and also find the timbre of his voice unusually good. So this likely leads me to be less prone to looking at the songs just as 'compositions;' whereas, if I didn't like the sound, I'd probably focus purely on that element too. (You know, Armed Forces has dodgy writing too, but we excuse this because the net effect is so great. But if you recoil from that 'New Wave' sound the entire package would probably drive you crazy).

One more thing on this. I agree, as well, that most of the tunes on SP & S aren't really visceral in their impact. I don't feel emotionally discombobulated after hearing 'I Dreamed of My Old Lover,' say, in the way that I do after I hear the best songs from KOA or some other records. (The only really visceral moment on the CD comes with the last two couplet of 'Red Cotton,' in my view - where EC suddenly delivers an emotional haymaker, lunging out of a lyric in grave danger of terminal drift). Yet I don't feel that the songs are purely intellectual exercises either.I find that the songs really take me somewhere, generally somewhere rich and interesting - in some odd (unique?) zone between actual history and imagination. And the characters and scenes seem very vivid. It's a pleasurable place to go, at least for me. It's also a fairly obscure place to go, and that may be one reason why the charge of 'intellectualism' gets tossed at these songs, but that doesn't alter the appealing nature of the place.

The more technical, but perhaps more fundamental, question about 'clean lines' is interesting. I know what you mean about EC's lack of rigour both in rhyme (e.g., 'union' with 'puny' - that's from hunger, man) and in cramming too many syllables into a line. It doesn't trouble me as much as it does you, but I think it's a legitimate criticism. Then again, Swinburne IS a legitimate role model - he was for TS Eliot, for instance! And for Bob Dylan. Which raises a question. If there's one master songwriter who jams outrageous amounts of syllables into 'undisciplined' lines, it's Bob Dylan (who I regard as hands-down the greatest songwriter of the second half of the 20th century and one of the few truly great artists of this era - not to oversell him or anything :wink: ). Do you apply this criticism to him? If not...why not? I have thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to hear yours.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Jack of All Parades »

PD, your opening paragraph is eye candy; engagement it is and I will push my glasses[one of many nerdy parts of me] up the bridge of my nose and try to honor you with an equal response. I have a best friend who is always cautioning me that I take too professorial a tone in my posts[sadly true]; that I should lighten up[equally true]. More importantly I have a great daughter who takes me to task with regularity and is always telling me you will bore them, no one wants to read such a post, be breezy. She is the same daughter who dutifully out of love for her old father has sat through every lecture the past 3 & 1/2 years by Christopher Ricks at Boston University on Bob Dylan[and enjoyed them]so she can satisfy the insatiable curiosity of her father as it relates to the subject. It is just not in me[hence my inner nerd]. As you note I take these matters and artists seriously and will always feel they deserve sharp attention, even when the attention is focused upon perceived faults or weaknesses. I truly appreciate your condemnation of any lessor approach to the work we all love to dissect and digest.

I am done with SP&S, at least dissecting it. We sit on opposite sides of this album and I respect you all the more for that. There is one image I do treasure from the record and that is the final song with its indelible picture of a waltzing EC with his love in his arms moving around life's dance floor to the tune of a charming minor song. Coming after years of sharp observation and analysis and self-castigation of himself regarding male-female relations it is a wonderful resolution for me and I hope for him.

I unequivocally hold the same standard to Dylan when it comes to cleanness of line. I agree with your assessment that he is the greatest lyricist of the last half century[not poet], though I think he often approaches poetry in many songs. When he confines himself to formal song structures such as folk ballads or the blues, I do not think anyone can touch him. When he ventures out into story verse he tends to fall apart. Songs like "Joey", "Hurricane', "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", 'Highlands", "When The Night Comes Falling From the Sky" or "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" are prime culprits for me. This is where I see EC have trouble as well.

But when Dylan is on[which is a great deal of the time] no one can touch him. I do not want to bore you with individual analysis[you already have a taste from me with my discussion of "Blind Willie McTell" vs. "Red Cotton"]. I would prefer to do that on the "Expecting Rain" site. His classic songs from the sixties, the mid seventies, the late nineties and through this decade[just listen to the recent "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'"] are supreme evidence of his mastery of form, rhyme, and what he calls 'punctuation' or the placement of words and syllables within a line. Rhyming is the key for me as Dylan uses it so deftly to 'punctuate' his song lines- he always manages to keep my ear alive with his adept use of rhyme. I do not always get that with EC which is a prime reason why so many of Dylan's songs are so memorably singable.

It is important to note here the strong similarities and differences between poems and lyrics. Both should exhibit a skilled usage of word sounds and rhyming, possessing a charged usage of words. They should engage a listener and/or reader on an emotional level. They should make a strong usage of metaphor, assonance, simile, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, descriptive imagery and antiphony. For difference a poem is intended to be read on a page while a lyric is meant to be sung, to be accompanied by the human voice and /or accompanying music. A successful lyric needs to be connected with a receptive listener and should have an immediate, focused impact on the ear and brain of the listener. It can also be ambiguous- just think Dylan here] but should be imaginatively stated. There is also the repetition of a refrain or a bridge as a lyric needs to be easily captured by the ear. This is the big point and where EC and Dylan[to a lessor extent] fail at times. A song lyric, filled with abstract phrases and dense, obscure words will be unintelligible to many listeners. "Bedlam" was recently cited within this forum as a strong lyric; I think it fails for this very reason.

A lyric more often than not has the words fit to the particular piece of music. I seem to recall Paul Simon saying once "Write the melodies. Live with them for a while. Then write the words." I was fascinated two nights ago by the Springsteen documentary on HBO, "Promise", which revealed his writing process. He clearly sharpened the music and then adapted words from a voluminous notebook to fit a particular song. This does not preclude a skilled composer from writing a melody around an existing lyric especially if the lyricist is knowledgeable about musical forms.

Bottom line a poem can be read; a lyric must be sung and it cannot be difficult or awkward to sing. Poetry can be of an abstract nature and of almost any length; lyrics need to be concise. A good lyric writer uses as few words as necessary to set a scene or evoke a feeling- concise, effective language. Free verse works well within poetry most times; it rarely works when applied to music[I only need listen to Kerouac's "Blues and Haikus" where behind my father in laws playing he blurts out his awkward lines.]. Ever try to listen to Allen Ginsburg's musical chants? Unbearable.

The eye opener for me on this is the sheer number of covers of Dylan songs[and quite successful ones at that]as opposed to covers of EC songs. The man could support himself off the success of those covers and has done so. EC for all his great catalog barely approaches that. Why? I think it comes down to cleanness of line. I could be wrong but your old Tom says "it is not always true that a person who knows a good poem when he see it can tell us why it is a good poem". I prefer this:

"Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truths: if their conceits were farfetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by description copied from descriptions, by imitation borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables." Dr. Johnson "The Life of Cowley"

I think that speaks to both EC and Dylan. Thank you for indulging me.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Driving to Liverpool, appropriately enough, with my eldest son at the weekend, off to check out the university (blimey, is it that time already?) and it was his choice on the iPod. he went for KOA and asked what I thought Brilliant Mistake was about. I gavr a slightly fumbly response as it's not one of those simple 'it's about X' lyrics, it's about a bunch of stuff, but it got me thinking about the third person/first person shift that you get in quite a few of EC's lyrics, and I cited Man Out of TIme, a particularly fine example of this. He's quite an EC enthusiast, with MAIT and TYM on regular rotation on his iPod, but he doesn't know IB, so we switched to that and played it in its entirety. I've not been listening to EC much in the last few years. So many other things have been inspiring me more and I kind of overdosed on his back catalogue with all the reissues in the early noughties, so it was a real pleasure to come back to IB. It sounds great, has some stellar songwriting, and has left my head pleasingly full of stellar fragments, e.g. the wonderful Town Crier, and 'I'm a little down/With a lifetime to go'. Elv was at the top of his songwriting game for this and many others. Man Out of Time made the hairs stand up on my neck it's so good.

Unfortunately getting up at 7.30 on a Saturday proved to much for the lad and he was asleep after a few songs, but he'll be back.

Finally, I loved the way EC tried out this new low-key, lower-register, intimate voice on IB, from the opening line onwards, or on You Little Fool. I love that voice.

Apart from this, I have, for no particular reason as I haven't played it in ages, All Time Doll on the brain.
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Re: "Imperial Bedroom" Last of a perfect trifecta for me!

Post by sweetest punch »

Nice version of Town Cryer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exuL4nmvveg
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