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MY AIM IS TRUE opens by promising a whole lot of nothing. On “Welcome to the Working Week,” Elvis Costello sits in his room—frazzled, pasty, miserable. He sees a model in the paper and knows she's being “rhythmically admired” all over England. “Sometimes I wonder if we're living in the same land,’ he spits. Not even close, pal. But the country of messed-up impulses he inhabits is way cooler.
No one had been as conversationally frank about bitterness, disappointment, contempt and frustration as Costello was in 1977 on My Aim Is True (here in its third iteration as a reissue). A former computer operator and Catholic-school attendee, Declan McManus took a stage name that combined mythic rocker and comic fool, and crashed the weird space for mutant stars recently created by the Sex Pistols. (He won notoriety by telling an interviewer he was motivated by only two emotions: revenge and guilt.) But where most punks cranked primal noise, Costello was too proud of his writerly rants to bury them in distortion. Noise would only blur the Raymond Chandleresque murder mystery “Watching the Detectives,” with its cold-eyed disdain for rich people.
The music is folk-rock and R&B sped up to fit hot-tempered times. The chiming guitar on “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” recalls the Byrds, and Costello's snarl is a clinched version of Bob Dylan's on Highway 61 Revisited.
He's scariest singing about his wracked self. On the deceptively sweet countrytinged “Alison,” Costello suggests he might get physical with his reluctant love object, adding menace to the soft refrain “My aim is true.” Plenty of ’70s singer-songwriters said nasty things about women, but Costello was unique in exposing his powerlessness. On the blitzing “I'm Not Angry,’ a would-be girlfriend cheats while he listens in the hallway, trying to pretend he’s too detached to care—“There’s no such thing as an original sin,” he reminds himself. It’s the stance of an emotionally stunted deep feeler, and 30 years of indie-rockers owe him a thanks-Dad shoulder punch.
My Aim Is True is the quintessential promising debut, a great album presaging greater ones. His backing group isn’t nearly as fired up as he is (later, several of them would become Huey Lewis's band). Costello knew it, and he soon assembled the Attractions, a tempestuous three-piece still getting to know one another at the time of the August 1977 live show that takes up most of the second disc, Steve Nieve's ballpark organ drowns out the guitar, and though Costello sings with nail-spitting gusto, the music feels a half step slow, making angry songs sound resigned. In the next two years, they recorded two astonishing albums: the blistering media critique This Year's Model and the sociopolitical dissection Armed Forces. Then Costello led them on a long journey to unimpeachable respectability. Now he’s an institution—so it’s thrilling to witness him here, before he was perfect.
Download: “Alison,” “Less Than Zero”, “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes”
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