Irish Times, January 1981: Difference between revisions
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It only seems like quite recently that Elvis Costello was standing outside a major record convention in London looking like an eccentric itinerant tube-station busker. A man who looked like a cross between Buddy Holly and the silent comedian Harold Lloyd, the joke was made to appear silly when his debut album. ''My Aim is True'', was released shortly afterwards to almost unanimous acclaim. | |||
However, the rock business is sadly all too similar to other classic capitalist enterprises where last year's model is this year's flop. And to open your career with a critically and popularly acclaimed album can be the kiss of death for later efforts. (Ask Mike Oldfield if in doubt.) | |||
But then Elvis Costello is much more than an average product of rock's astute business sense. Hype may have brought him to public attention, but it is his songs and performances that have kept him and his band, The Attractions, there. His second album ''This Year's Model'', as the title suggests, was conscious of the fluctuations of fashion, but it also clearly displayed that the angry, little bespeckled man in the tight suit had too much to offer to become one of rock's forgotten flashes. | |||
His third album, ''Armed Forces'', was the final installment of the period that began with his debut. Like his first two albums the lyrical imagery was vicious and the songs tough and uncompromising. He seemed to be opening up his mind in public, though in such a veiled manner that the feelings could relate to the listener as much as to the writer. He had never been content to repeat pop's well-worn cliches; when you listened you realised that the songs were the result of the classic artistic mix of anguish ald inspiration and not the product of cynical condescension. | |||
Last year's ''Get Happy'' switched the emphasis from the head to the feet with EC clearly terracing his roots in American soul and r&b. But if the instinctive reaction was to start | |||
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