Chicago Reader, August 22, 1996: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> Feet of clay </h3></center> | <center><h3> Feet of clay </h3></center> | ||
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Costello was a middle-class solo artist who didn't really belong on the British punk-rock team but was too innovative to be lumped in with anyone else. His trick, the one that made him punk, was to pit bitingly ironic lyrics against catchy pop tunes. The music on his debut, ''My Aim Is True'', was unornamented country rock (provided by an American band called Clover that included future pop prole Huey Lewis on harmonica), but the lyrics were another matter. Costello's whiplike wordplay had few antecedents and no peers in rock, and it sliced through emotional cruelty and social stupidity with a wit that made self-pity seem like a virtue. A string of underground hits made him as big a star as a punk was allowed to be. | Costello was a middle-class solo artist who didn't really belong on the British punk-rock team but was too innovative to be lumped in with anyone else. His trick, the one that made him punk, was to pit bitingly ironic lyrics against catchy pop tunes. The music on his debut, ''My Aim Is True'', was unornamented country rock (provided by an American band called Clover that included future pop prole Huey Lewis on harmonica), but the lyrics were another matter. Costello's whiplike wordplay had few antecedents and no peers in rock, and it sliced through emotional cruelty and social stupidity with a wit that made self-pity seem like a virtue. A string of underground hits made him as big a star as a punk was allowed to be. | ||
As punk crumbled, Costello continued to build new and unforgettable tropes from the same old cliches — often by soldering them together end to end — and by the time he made ''Trust'' (1981), his criminally underrated fifth album, he was constructing songs that truly seemed to belong in a genre of their own. But the popularity he yearned for and deserved eluded him; his rejection by mainstream America became an insoluble lump of resentment that would surface again and again on subsequent albums with titles like King of America, Spike, the Beloved Entertainer, and the new All This Useless Beauty. | As punk crumbled, Costello continued to build new and unforgettable tropes from the same old cliches — often by soldering them together end to end — and by the time he made ''Trust'' (1981), his criminally underrated fifth album, he was constructing songs that truly seemed to belong in a genre of their own. But the popularity he yearned for and deserved eluded him; his rejection by mainstream America became an insoluble lump of resentment that would surface again and again on subsequent albums with titles like ''King of America'', ''Spike'', ''the Beloved Entertainer'', and the new ''All This Useless Beauty''. | ||
It didn't help matters when, on a U.S. tour for his third album, ''Armed Forces'', a drunk Costello intentionally provoked Bonnie Bramlett (who decked him) by referring to Ray Charles as "a blind, ignorant nigger." Having picked the wrong time to finally turn into a real punk, Costello's reputation for being the thinking man's rocker hit the floor along with his ass. His next two albums, ''Get Happy!'' and ''Trust'', were hobbled out of the gate by a witch-hunt for more signs of racism, though none could be found. | It didn't help matters when, on a U.S. tour for his third album, ''Armed Forces'', a drunk Costello intentionally provoked Bonnie Bramlett (who decked him) by referring to Ray Charles as "a blind, ignorant nigger." Having picked the wrong time to finally turn into a real punk, Costello's reputation for being the thinking man's rocker hit the floor along with his ass. His next two albums, ''Get Happy!'' and ''Trust'', were hobbled out of the gate by a witch-hunt for more signs of racism, though none could be found. | ||
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The shit storm broke with ''Punch the Clock'', the first truly bad album of Costello's career and, unfortunately, the model for many bad albums to come. Costello seemed to have lost his instincts amid needlessly filigreed horn and string crap and huffa-puffa emoting. For the first time, his willingness to derail a song's momentum in order to wedge in a few more syllables was a weakness rather than a strength. This album yielded his first American top 40 hit, "Everyday I Write the Book" — a forced, overproduced pop song that condenses everything wrong about ''Punch the Clock'' into three minutes. | The shit storm broke with ''Punch the Clock'', the first truly bad album of Costello's career and, unfortunately, the model for many bad albums to come. Costello seemed to have lost his instincts amid needlessly filigreed horn and string crap and huffa-puffa emoting. For the first time, his willingness to derail a song's momentum in order to wedge in a few more syllables was a weakness rather than a strength. This album yielded his first American top 40 hit, "Everyday I Write the Book" — a forced, overproduced pop song that condenses everything wrong about ''Punch the Clock'' into three minutes. | ||
But success of the kind that Costello appeared to have in mind was reserved for a pretty face, which he didn't have, and a certain lightness that he seemed on the verge, but ultimately was incapable, of sinking to. He was becoming an increasingly unpopular pop star, vacillating between pretty but calculated stabs at radio-friendly rock ("Veronica") and bitter renunciations of the very success he seemed to be striving for. Attacks on his own failure left him disfigured by the same acid wit that had etched his early songs on so many minds. He released a long string of wildly inconsistent albums; although his verbal power remained generally intact, the musical settings became less coherent. Even the best record of his later period, 1986's King of America, is a white-knuckle ride, with the inane "Eisenhower Blues" and a thuddingly obvious version of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" jutting out from between some of his most alluring songs. | But success of the kind that Costello appeared to have in mind was reserved for a pretty face, which he didn't have, and a certain lightness that he seemed on the verge, but ultimately was incapable, of sinking to. He was becoming an increasingly unpopular pop star, vacillating between pretty but calculated stabs at radio-friendly rock ("Veronica") and bitter renunciations of the very success he seemed to be striving for. Attacks on his own failure left him disfigured by the same acid wit that had etched his early songs on so many minds. He released a long string of wildly inconsistent albums; although his verbal power remained generally intact, the musical settings became less coherent. Even the best record of his later period, 1986's ''King of America'', is a white-knuckle ride, with the inane "Eisenhower Blues" and a thuddingly obvious version of "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" jutting out from between some of his most alluring songs. | ||
In this context, All This Useless Beauty comes as something of a relief, like jumping into a pool and finding the water agreeably lukewarm. Grown-up pop songs predominate, from the lush "The Other End of the Telescope" to solid but predictable workouts like the Paul McCartney collaboration "Shallow Grave." The high point of the album — the anthem that's kin to Imperial Bedroom's "Man out of Time" and King of America's title track — is "You Bowed Down," a Byrds cop from top to bottom but still a ringing reminder of Costello's considerable hook-writing prowess. | In this context, ''All This Useless Beauty'' comes as something of a relief, like jumping into a pool and finding the water agreeably lukewarm. Grown-up pop songs predominate, from the lush "The Other End of the Telescope" to solid but predictable workouts like the Paul McCartney collaboration "Shallow Grave." The high point of the album — the anthem that's kin to <i>Imperial Bedroom</i>'s "Man out of Time" and <i>King of America</i>'s title track — is "You Bowed Down," a Byrds cop from top to bottom but still a ringing reminder of Costello's considerable hook-writing prowess. | ||
Throughout the album, the old bite and bile is evident in carefully aimed barbs at favorite targets. To a fading flame: ''"Now it's so hard to pick the receiver up when I call / I never noticed you could be so small."'' To a writer run afoul of the artist's temper: ''"Poor Fractured Atlas threw himself across the mattress / Waving his withering pencil as if it were a pirate's cutlass."'' To himself, for losing track of his own vision: ''"I'm certain as a lost dog pondering a signpost / I want to vanish / This is my last request / I've given you the awful truth / Now let me rest."'' There are plenty of inscrutable lines as well — for instance, ''"I arose and Marigold lay down with Curious Iris / Cherry gave to Victor her prudence and her virus"'' — but it's fun to go digging through his verbiage even if we're too thick to understand every reference. | Throughout the album, the old bite and bile is evident in carefully aimed barbs at favorite targets. To a fading flame: ''"Now it's so hard to pick the receiver up when I call / I never noticed you could be so small."'' To a writer run afoul of the artist's temper: ''"Poor Fractured Atlas threw himself across the mattress / Waving his withering pencil as if it were a pirate's cutlass."'' To himself, for losing track of his own vision: ''"I'm certain as a lost dog pondering a signpost / I want to vanish / This is my last request / I've given you the awful truth / Now let me rest."'' There are plenty of inscrutable lines as well — for instance, ''"I arose and Marigold lay down with Curious Iris / Cherry gave to Victor her prudence and her virus"'' — but it's fun to go digging through his verbiage even if we're too thick to understand every reference. | ||
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[[Category:Chicago Reader| Chicago Reader 1996-08-22]] | [[Category:Chicago Reader| Chicago Reader 1996-08-22]] | ||
[[Category:Newspaper articles]] | [[Category:Newspaper articles]] | ||
[[Category:1996 concert | [[Category:1996 concert reviews]] | ||
[[Category:1996 US Tour|~Chicago Reader 1996-08-22]] | [[Category:1996 US Tour|~Chicago Reader 1996-08-22]] |
Latest revision as of 15:40, 14 September 2016
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