Audio, July 1980: Difference between revisions
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Elvis Costello's fourth album, ''Get Happy'', could hardly have been more different from the third, ''Armed Forces''. ''Forces'' was very carefully crafted, very much a studio and stereo creation | Elvis Costello's fourth album, ''Get Happy'', could hardly have been more different from the third, ''Armed Forces''. ''Forces'' was very carefully crafted, very much a studio and stereo creation with very good sound. ''Get Happy'' is very ambitious, containing 20 songs, ten per side. By aural appearances the album was mostly recorded live in the studio with minimal overdubbing and done rapid-fire, one song after another. The sound is tough and raw. Costello's voice is most often buried in the mix and undecipherable while the band has never sounded muddier. | ||
As for the songs, 18 are originals and two are covers, one an obscure Sam & Dave B-side, the other a Mersey Beats song. Oddly, Costello seems intent on undermining some of his best ideas either through the deliberately cheesy recording or opaque arrangements. "B Movies" is an excellent example. When I first heard it played as a brand new song, it was an angry, driving, full-throttled rocker written right after the infamous remark about Ray Charles and the ensuing incident with Bonnie Bramlett — which had occurred only a week before. Now on the record the melody is a different, cuter one that forces the words into a jumble. The voice of fury gives way to a petulant whine. | |||
Frankly, out of 20 songs, some are awfully good. With that many so it should be. Two ballads — "Motel Matches" and "Riot Act" — stand out. "High Fidelity" is a wonderful song with an insistent catch line in ''"Can you hear me?"'' "Beaten to the Punch" is spunky, and "Black and White World" is challenging. But the overall impression, an unavoidable one, is confusion amidst all the '60s sounds. | |||
Costello and producer Nick Lowe have admirably reached for a lot, but they've made it as difficult as they could for a listener to absorb. Producer Lowe has written some brief notes for the album's back cover, obviously tongue in cheek, but they bear quoting: "Elvis and I talked long and hard about the wisdom of taking this unusual step [of putting 10 songs on a side], and [we] are proud that we can now reassure hi-fi enthusiasts and/or people who never bought a record made before 1967 that with the inclusion of this extra music time they will find ''no'' loss of sound quality due to 'groove cramming' as the record nears the end of each face (i.e. the hole in the middle)." I must read this note as sardonic, contemptuous and damn near downright insulting. In fact, the songs are all so short that while ''Get Happy'' does have an admittedly generous amount of playing time, it by no means represents a breakthrough of any kind. Further, the sound, as I've already noted, is so muddy and impenetrable that the album is no less than a gratuitous slap in the face, particularly after the technical excellence displayed on ''Armed Forces''. And it is not anywhere near as much fun either. | |||
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Revision as of 22:00, 11 January 2018
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