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When historians hold the deep, dark, truthful mirror up to Elvis Costello's career, the light will linger just a little bit longer on Spike, his first effort since 1986's Blood & Chocolate.
Marketing considerations aside — who knows, this may turn out to be the album that re-establishes Costello as a viable commercial entity — the reason for the attention will be Spike's undeniable artistic achievement.
Whether it's his "best" work, or his most consistent, is for the legion of Costello-philes to ponder in the privacy of homemade shrines to the King of America, a.k.a. Declan MacManus, a.k.a. Napoleon Dynamite. But Spike (Warner Bros.), released Tuesday, is the first album to fully link Costello's prowess as a songwriter — at this he has very few peers — with the other ingredients generally considered vital to a great pop statement — such as performance, arrangement and spirit. Elements that, in combination, have more than once eluded him.
On his day of career reckoning, the small nuances that make Spike such a watermark will be marveled at, dissected, analyzed — and they should be. The album is dizzy with details, sculpted and planned down to the last chime of the glockenspiel. It's preened, not overproduced. The big question — "Does it feel good?" — is covered, and that means there's room for plenty of tiny embellishments. Like the way Costello's one-liners — "When England was the whore of the world, Margaret was her madam" — so craftily carve up Margaret Thatcher's policies in "Tramp the Dirt Down." Or the way Costello's many guests sound right at home playing together: Who else could have united New Orleans' Dirty Dozen Brass Band with the members of the Irish preservationists the Chieftains so musically? And at the same time employ members from two of his previous bands, the Attractions and the Confederates?
While the early records Armed Forces and My Aim Is True happily achieved a balance of body energy and songwriting mind, Costello's later work has been plagued by an over-reliance on the wit of the song to sell it all. He has certainly used his arranger's pen effectively before (Punch the Clock, King of America), but he never trusted his knack fully, as Blood & Chocolate proved. The songs didn't fit neatly together — they were slightly more intense than their surroundings. It seemed Elvis Costello was becoming a songwriter and moving away from his perch as pop stylist.
Spike, an underhanded homage to quirky bandleader Spike Jones that was produced by Costello, Kevin Killen and T-Bone Burnett, has changed that. In a subtle shift of attitude rather than a wholesale change, Costello apparently viewed his new songs as theater. He wrote the same kind of epics he has always written, then supported them with textures you'd likely find in a movie score or in folk music.
The 14 songs on Spike (15 on the CD) rely on the sounds of a relentlessly swinging brass section; the jabbing, serious accusations accomplished with strings; the thunderous "I'm home" bellow of the tympani; the dissonant clang of metal pipe, and the haunting presence of a skating-rink organ. These touches are hardly novelties or attempts to flesh out a stark canvas; they are woven into music that demands intelligent treatment without being pompous about it. It's Kurt Weill and Cole Porter trapped in the body of an angry, slightly brainy English punk whose best offensive weapon is a pointed barb, his second best a snarling (but still tuneful) exclamation.
Naturally this punk wants to sing in grand, operatic surroundings. In opera, the peak narrative moments are emphasized with musical devices such as diminished chords, which connote a flurry of action or a transition; grand pauses, which suspend the action; choruses that bicker back and forth between points of view. These tricks are used to great effect in the new Costello songs: On "Veronica," diminished chords form the bridge between the chorus and the snappy verses, and volleying vocal parts create Sensurround tension on "Satellite."
So Spike is a musical victory just on the strength of its arrangements. What makes it an awesome feat is the way these arrangements — coupled with Costello's tortured vocal constructions — dredge the depths of the elaborately developed verses. The finale, "Last Boat Leaving," a song about a father and son parting, is one illustration: The brief chorus, a direct bow to the Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles, doesn't erase the resignation of the moment or Costello's thirst for the romantic; it closes after a repeat exhaltation by fading out slowly, as if drifting away from a dock.
Similar precision is evident throughout: on the confrontational gospel "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," which features rolling, unhurried piano from New Orleans rhythm master Allen Toussaint; the capital-punishment screed "Let Him Dangle," and the softshoe farce "God's Comic," in which a rapidly volleying chorus reveals that God likes Andrew Lloyd Webber (but wonders if he should have given "the world to the monkeys") and entertains on a waterbed.
Costello knows the emotional turf he's trying to reach, and he hits it just about every time — note the way he tears into the chorus of "Coal Train Robberies," a bonus track available on the cassette and compact disc. Or the way he barely masks the resignation in his voice on the done-me-wrong "Baby Plays Around." Or the slamming, dissonant funk groove "Chewing Gum," in which he reveals an admiration of Prince.
Here, as elsewhere, Costello relies on the Dirty Dozen, using their huffing and puffing syncopations as a model for his own rhythmically locked vocal delivery. Want to know if Costello can sing fire? Examine lines like "There must be something better than this / It starts with a slap and ends with a kiss."
And by all means, take that chewing gum out of your ears — at least long enough to enjoy "Veronica." Four minutes of guiltless, breathless pure pop rapture, this song joins "Alison" in Costello's collection of homages to women, and stands as one of his most stunning singles. It has all the elements of great pop arranging and then some — does the solo trumpet that plays baroque tag with the voice remind you of, say, "Penny Lane"? The song starts with rippling, bulldozer-force energy, but before two verses go by, it has drifted into dreamy half-time. It snaps back, as if punched up by remote control, into the firework-like eruptions of the chorus that last long enough to make the chopped-off ending seem too abrupt. This is what a single is all about: one blast of giddy celebration so compelling it demands to be heard again.
Now imagine an entire album like that. We haven't had one in a while. Spike is it.
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