Word: albums
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...something like that on Martin's first, and so far only, record, "Let's Get Small." That's the main drawback of the album, which is very funny in places. "Let's Get Small" was recorded live during a performance at the Boarding House in San Francisco. The effect of Martin knocking over his mike is just not the same on a record as it is when you see him do it. And the faces Martin makes as he plays the banjo are very hard to imagine when you're sitting in your living room listening to the record...
Much of "Let's Get Small" is very funny, but Martin could produce a much funnier album if he kept himself within the limitations of the medium. By cutting a record from a live performance that often relied on visual jokes, Martin has diminished the quality of his album...
...tour to promote Foreign Affairs, his fifth album, Waits is playing in fewer of the seedy nightclubs that have long been his backdrop as a performer and his inspiration as an artist. At 27, he is a street-smart scuffler who writes knowingly of dingy bars, all-night diners and down-and-outers on the make. Says he: "Life is picking up a girl with bad teeth, or getting to know one of those wild-eyed rummies down on Sixth Avenue...
...Alison" is the album's most interesting song. A ballad, it's unsettling in the same way as "I'm Not Angry"--what Costello says works at cross-purposes with how he says it. The music is quiet and lyrical, and another aspect of Costello's instrumental skill is revealed in the reflective, jazz-like guitar figures he plays under the vocal. The words, however, belie the tradition of rock and roll ballads to lost loves. Yes, there's sadness there for what used to be--but the norm in classic rock lyrics is the graceful acquiescence, and Costello will...
...revivalists, of whom he is certainly one; to the punks, of whom he is not. The comparisons will be made, but they will be unfair. They'll be easy handles for people who will be scared away by outward appearances and won't recognize this album for what it is--vibrant and really original rock and roll in a classic mold from a musician whose strong suit is his distrust of people and their ability to judge. What makes this album so different and so good is that Costello very consciously does not live up to the expectations he creates...