Word: costello
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...haircut is straight out of the '50s; the rumpled suit looks like a reject from a thrift-store bin. With huge hornrimmed glasses covering half his face, Elvis Costello, 23, looks vaguely familiar as he swaggers awkwardly up to a microphone. Ah, but of course. He is that same little guy who couldn't buy himself a date back in high school...
...British-born Costello may look a bit like Woody Allen with a guitar, but there is nothing timid about his music. With a three-piece band behind him, he blasts out a stream of riffs that recalls the piston rhythms of Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Little Richard and the early Beatles. The songs are angrier than the soft rock that spun out of Southern California onto the record charts this year, and Costello sings them with a prophet's urgency. In the light of his sizzling reception on a just completed U.S. tour, the message seems clear: rock...
Much of the grit has come from punk and New Wave bands whose songs favor sledgehammer subtlety and three-chord accompaniment. Costello, however, dismisses American punks as "rich hippies whining about the Viet Nam War" and resists any invitation to describe himself. "The minute you become self-conscious about what you're doing, or start analyzing it, it's all over," he snaps. "I choose not to explain...
...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...
...ALISON," as in "I'm Not Angry" and throughout My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello anticipates our reactions and responds by ringing changes on them. Comparisons are inevitable--to Presley, from whom he took his name; to Springsteen, and Mick Jagger, and Graham Parker, like all of whom he sounds; to the r&b 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...