at a glance...

Hometown: Liverpool, England
Born: 1954

Personnel:
Elvis Costello -vocals, guitar
Bruce Thomas -bass
Pete Thomas -drums
Steve Nieve -keyboards
Nick Lowe -acoustic guitar

Bands in the Family:
Nick Lowe, Burt Bacharach, Brinsley Schwarz, The Specials, The Pogues, Squeeze, Roger McGuinn, Ian Dury, Paul McCartney, Clover, The Brodsky Quartet, Wendy James

Notes:
He's been through more styles in less time than Bob Dylan, and it's to "the Big D" he's probably best compared in terms of influence, lyrical craftsmanship, and willful perversity, but Elvis Costello has the edge in terms of melodic craft. He was born Declan Patrick MacManus in London, the son of an Anglo-Irish music-hall bandleader, but his debut album on Stiff Records showed no signs of music-hall bounce at all: My Aim Is True was filled with angry, frustrated, impotent songs informed by punk, reggae, and rockabilly. But even as the album was released, Elvis had assembled the crack outfit called the Attractions, and together they formed one of the best working bands in the world. Every subsequent album showed more chutzpah and chops, and Costello's clever songs of rage made him a hero to fans on both sides of the Atlantic, but many casual followers deserted him when he branched out into country (Almost Blue), orchestral pop (IbMePdErRoIoAmL), and just plain radio pop (the underrated Punch the Clock). After one truly horrible album (Goodbye Cruel World), he regrouped in 1986 by forming an extremely diverse band called The Costello Show for King of America. Some would claim that the 1990s were largely wasted for Elvis, but 1998's Painted from Memory, his highly acclaimed collaboration with Burt Bacharach, had critics and record buyers salivating again.

If King Of America was Elvis Costello at his most artistically ambitious and mature, this record shows that same matured Elvis returning to a few old haunts and raising a ruckus. It is, in short, a rock record.

When it was recorded, relations between he and the band had so corroded that this was strongly suspected to be their final recording session (it wasn't). Ever the pop historian, Costello submitted songs that echoed the Attractions' earliest material refracted through early electric Dylan. But more importantly the songs were structurally quite simple, which gave the band plenty of room to play with the songs rather than worry about how to play them. They were also well-matched sentimentally to the men who were going to play them. The four men hired their old producer, checked into a funky old rehearsal studio, circled their amps, and cut loose with an update on the trademark sound that they had hammered out on This Year's Model and had been studiously watering down for half a decade. They poured into this set of compelling, catchy, and laceratingly cruel songs all the hatred they felt for each other, cast aside all the restraint that had turned their last couple of recordings into bland pop throwaways, and came up with the album of their career.

The record opens on "Uncomplicated" with Costello sputtering imprecations at some hapless, ill-matched lover while the band pounds out a visceral one-chord stomp. Things never let up; the rockers sustain a textural and rhythmic aggression unmatched anywhere else in their catalog, and the ballads are steeped in guilt and regret, not the adolescent sort that infused Costello's earlier records, but the sentiments of a man who knows what it's like to do things that you really can't take back and have those things become headlined around the world. There are better known and tidier records in the Costello canon, but none with more bite.