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Elvis Costello's song-writing ability continues to amaze. Since 1977, he has released 10 albums, each of which are loaded with songs — 20 tunes in two instances and none of which are padded with filler. Goodbye Cruel World, the latest release from Elvis and his Attractions, is a diverse group of 13 melodies, each with the familiar Elvis style, now fine-tuned after seven years of vinyl, yet each sounding as fresh and innovative as ever.
Despite this awesome presence, Elvis Costello has yet to have a hit in the United States. While Goodbye Cruel World won't be topping the charts, a hit single is possible with the album's first song, "The Only Flame in Town." With the decade's best pep singer, Darryl Hall, becoming the first man to sing background vocals for Elvis Costello, "The Only Flame in Town" might help American kids to finally find out who Elvis Costello is. The song also employs Hall and Oates type horns and here Elvis' voice is at its sweetest, helping to make this song the album's closest thing to a love song.
"The Only Flame..." starts the pace for an album whose title can surely not convey anything positive. The record is filled with a mix of songs about friendships, relationships, and personalities, all of which relate a situation which is negative, or spooky at the least.
The album's second song is called "Home Truth," and tells of the end of a relationship where the truth is gone. Anyone who has had a troublesome breakup of a long romance can relate when Elvis sings, "This is where the home truth ends / and I feel like a clown / It's tearing me up / It's tearing me down," brilliantly using two phrases that sound like opposites, yet mean the same thing.
"Room with No Number" is a fast moving, fun song, with classic Elvis vocals, and lots of piano. Over the years Elvis' use of keyboardist Steve Nieve's music has shifted from an organ to a piano sound, especially apparent on Goodbye Cruel World. However, just as the piano has reached the height of its importance in the Attractions, no credit has been given for the keyboards, and Nieve's name doesn't appear anywhere on the album. Instead, Maurice Worm is credited with supplying "Random Racket," and representing the third Attraction on the back cover, Nieve, who used to wear a gorilla's mask when introduced in concert, is wearing a fencing mask.
Bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas round out the original Attractions, while the three piece horn section featured on last year's Punch the Clock is now a two piece, with Gary Barnacle on sax, and Jimmy Patterson, from the original Dexy's Midnite Runners, playing the trombone. Afrodiziak, the female background vocalists, also appearing on Punch the Clock, are gone, after most recently singing with Madness on their Keep Moving album, but Madness' producers, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, have remained for their second Elvis Costello album and are supposedly doing some production work for Aztec Camera, who toured with Elvis Costello and the Attractions during the summer of 1983, and played in the Campus Center ballroom in October 1983.
Another gem on side one is "Worthless Thing," which takes a look at an old issue; the practice of judging a person's worth physically, rather than spiritually. "If you were 10 feet taller / and almost handsome / I might pay / this king's ransom / you worthless thing," the singer is told. Despite the banality of the concept, the song is very catchy, and is flowing with a usual Costellian assortment of strange lyrics, including his first reference to his namesake, when he sings, "You're drinking vintage Elvis Presley wine."
Side two opens with a cover song entitled, "1 Wanna be Loved," which is sung with feeling, while being played at a fun, danceable pace. An extended version of the song has already been released in England, and it definitely merits radio play, which it will only receive if it is released domestically as a single, and only then if "The Only Flame in Town" has become a hit.
Also featured on side two are a half dozen other tunes including Elvis' first rock and roll blues song, "Sour Milk-Cow Blues," "Deportees Club," a fast moving song featuring screaming vocals, reminiscent of early Elvis Costello, and the album's most moving tune, "Peace in Our Time." This is the second single released by "The Imposter," Elvis' pseudonym. Apparently, F-Beat records, Elvis' British record label, doesn't like to release singles before the release of the album on which they will appear. To combat this, Elvis hat released "Peace in Our Time," and Punch the Clock's '"Pills and Soap," as The Imposter in the UK.
With "Peace in Our Time" Elvis Costello has made his most poignant political statement to date. Politically, his inspiration for this sons seems to be the policies and actions of President Reagan, who is progressively becoming more unpopular among the British. One direct reference is made about the Grenada invasion, as well as a sarcastic line about the president's nuclear space race warfare stance — "There's already one spaceman in the White House / what you want another one for?" Although specifics in political songs ate bound to obsolition, as John Glenn has long since fallen by the wayside in Election '84, the final message is not in the verse, but in the chorus, the only part of the song that is repeated — "And the bells / take their toll / once again / in a victory chime / And we can thank God / that we finally got / peace in our time." - a sad satire of the situation at hand. And after his solemn, yet almost pleading vocals fade away, Elvis pounds out haunting sounds on a blacksmith's anvil, the instrument used to forge devices of warfare.
So Elvis Costello ends his latest album with the line, "we finally got peace in our time." One can only wish that the chances of that were as good as the sure thing that Elvis Costello will continue to put out great music for years to come.
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