Word: costelloe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much fun as Costello's old ballads and dance numbers, but it's just as convincing...
Behind all this dramatic song-writing lay anger--not a punk's stick-your-tongue-out anger at society, but the very personal anger of a man's failures with women. Track after track railed on about the fumbling, fear and deception that, at least for Costello, no "sexual revolution" ever relieved. On This Year's Model, another figure crept up behind Elvis the victim of women--Elvis the victim of corporate espionage, electronic surveillance, loss of privacy, depersonalization; Elvis the inhabitant...
...unsettling way Costello at times seemed gleefully to accept and participate in the paranoia. The cover of This Year's Model featured him peering like a suspicious, hurt little boy from behind a movie camera trained on you. In "Night Rally," a song from the British edition of This Year's Model which Columbia removed from the domestic release (I wonder why?), he sings...
ARMED FORCES began life under the name "Emotional Fascism." The old title is a perfect epithet for Elvis Costello's obsessions, but he had to bow to the commercial wisdom that would advise against that title. Costello hasn't completely given up on womankind, but his misogyny makes way for the paranoia here, and the music reflects the change. It's less straightforward, a bit less dynamic, and relies heavily on the work of studio whiz Nick Lowe...
...would be unfair to expect any musician to maintain the hot-and-bothered pace of Costello's first two albums, and Armed Forces does have its share of rockers--"Goon Squad" and "Accidents Will Happen" in particular carry on the tradition. But all over the new album there are signs of his evolution towards more versatile music-making. He's always had a touch of the middle-of-the-road about him--he recorded a Burt Bacharach number on a live anthology last year. "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding," a Nick Lowe song which Costello belts...