Word: costello
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Intensified! tunes have a loping energy, even when the recording quality is dense and almost smothering, as if the musicians were trying to play their way out of a bowl of tapioca. Both the Madness and Specials albums (the latter produced by the sullen genie of punk, Elvis Costello) are careful to preserve a spontaneous sound that just skirts being primitive. The groups rock a little harder than their forebears too. "We were the first band which wanted to combine punk and reggae," says Jerry ("General Dankey") Dammers of the Specials, "because we liked them both." Bass Player Horace...
...HAPPY!! is the most exhilarating album ever to emerge from a universe of gorgons turning each other to stone. The riotous title is either a joke of a threat--imagine Costello's goons clubbing you with those exclamation points. Happiness is a warm gun, remember...
Formerly, Costello had a female antagonist worthy of sparring; "Two Little Hitlers" defined relationships as an unending series of one-upmanships and clashes, a dance of death with each power in turn vowing to return. Here, his sometime partner, presumably aging Playboy centerfold and intercontinental pleasure-kitten Bebe Buell, is merely a "B Movie," "a sob-soap story" devoid of all but carnal interest; this is not two Hitlers, but Hitler and Mussolini. The song climaxes as Elvis taunts her for her shallowness: "You can't feel, you can't feel," his voice echoing in her vacuity, while Bruce Thomas...
...Happy!!, known among the cognoscenti as "20 Hits 20," sports 20 songs, and any one of them would redeem any album by any other artist. Elvis Costello is aggressively showing off, sneering "anything you can do, I can do better," and getting away with it because he's right. The scope of the music is vast, expanding an already startling repertoire of styles. Lyrically, Elvis continues to be ambitious and elliptical, outrageous, profound. The themes are familiar: betrayal, emotional imprisonment, greed, loss of feeling...
...Happy!!, Elvis Costello pays homage to his American musical influences--soul, blues, much Motown and Stax, as well as reggae. Costello, in Lou Reed's phrase, "wants to be Black." One of the two covers is an old Sam and Dave song, the rousing, "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down." Charmingly, it comes out sounding like Graham Parker and the Rumour. Influences being what they are, maybe it was supposed...