1 | THE SHORT LIST.
The word genius gets tossed around like a frisbee in reviews of and discussions about music. Eminem is a genius, and so was Tupac Shakur; Win Butler from Arcade Fire is a genius; Bruce Springsteen is a genius; Ben Gibbard? Genius. Maybe not the genius that is Ryan Adams, but genius nonetheless... But let’s be honest and clear: None of those people are geniuses. None of them. Some have had moments of brilliance, but geniuses? Bruce touched on it all over Nebraska. Eminem hit upon genius in the final verse of “White America,” and in a few other places over the years. Arcade Fire have done some good, but they’re too indebted to David Byrne and Talking Heads to be considered anything close to genius in their own right. (David Byrne? Close, very close to genius...) Ben Gibbard is more the Carrot Top of Rock than he is it’s Stephen Hawking. Ryan Adams hasn’t exactly become a complete failure since his bright start, but he’s become something maybe much worse: Middling. By my count there are only four bonafide, genuine living geniuses in the world of pop music. The first is the cute Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney. Add to him Ray Davies of The Kinks... I think anyone of sane mind would have to concede Bob Dylan.
The forth, and perhaps most pronounced genius in the game is none other than Mr. Elvis Costello, the original angry young man.
2 | IT AIN’T EASY.
Being a genius has got to be hard work.
In his forties, when Elvis Costello decided to write classical music, he taught himself how to read and write musical notation.
He’s written jazz, blues, soul, country, and pop in about nine-hundred different styles, and he’s quite literally excelled at all of it at one time or another. Like McCartney, Costello’s had a couple of burn-outs (Kojak Variety, I’m looking at you) but the burn-outs have helped define him as much as the successes. And besides, you can’t be a genius without failing a few times, especially when the failures have been at the hands of experimentation and the furthering of one’s craft.
Rock is his bread and butter. It’s his house. It’s where he lives. He hasn’t had many failures when plugged into his amp and kicking out jams with his trusty co-horts. He’s had his periods of lesser marvels, but he’s never been less than interesting when dabbling in pop music.
3 | A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY.
When he came onto the scene in 1977 he was heavily associated with the punk movement, despite not being punk, all because of his energy, and anger. He took the drive of The Ramones and mixed it up with the sounds of Motown and Buddy Holly... All of which are American, come to think of it, which is funny for one of the most quintessential of British songwriters...
He was the leader of The Angry Young Man movement, with Joe Jackson, Graham Parker and Marshall Crenshaw as his followers.
His debut, My Aim is True, is a true classic, causing quite the stir, not just for the music contained therein, but also for the album sleeves repeated proclamation that “ELVIS IS KING,” coming so shortly after the death of Elvis Presley as it did.
As he matured he became more of a craftsman. His music became more thoughtful, his incredible wordplay becoming even more incredible, taking a much more central position on his palette. He became more. He started out important, but became essential. It’s no overstatement to say that the landscape of modern pop music would look vastly different had there been no Elvis Costello, as much as had there been -God forbid- no Buddy Holly.
4 | LATTER DAYS.
For over a decade now, each new Costello rock album -now backed by the Imposters rather than his classic Attractions, though the two bands share a majority of members- has been greeted as a return to form for the now angry old man. The consistency of such claims borders on the absurd, though not because they are so overly boisterous in their insistence that he’s returned to form, but for the fact that Elvis Costello: The Rock Star has never really been out of form. As I said, there have been better albums and worser ones, but he’s never fallen to the depths of, say, 1980’s Bob Dylan...
It’s arguable that his 1995 release, Blood & Chocolate -featuring such gems as “Uncomplicated,” "I Hope You’re Happy Now,” "Battered Old Bird,” and “I Want You,” each of which much certainly be counted among the master’s best (and most embittered) compositions- is Costello’s best album period. Even later than that is the wonderful Brutal Youth, and the near perfect When I Was Cruel. Both albums added to a stunning catalogue songs that were every bit as everything as the man’s earliest songs: They were as angry, as eloquent, as magical, as soulful, as inventive, as well crafted as “Alison,” or “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” or “Pump It Up.”
And now comes Momofuku.
It’s being called a return to form. Costello is described as re-invigorated. It’s an album in the “classic Costello style,” whatever the hell that is.
5 | MOMOFUKU.
Here is something: It IS an album in the classic Costello style. Whatever the hell that is.
But, wait... Let’s jump back a bit.
5 | OUT OF RETIREMENT.
A couple of years -two?- ago Elvis Costello had quietly retired from recording his pop music. He was sick and tired of what came with promotion and dealing with record labels in general. In early 2008 he went into the studio to record some songs with Jenny Lewis, she of The Watson Twins fame.
Lewis, by some twist of fate, had drafted The Imposters’ rhythm section to play on some songs on her new album, and somehow or other Costello got roped into singing along with her on one of them. (These sessions also included drummer Pete Thomas’ daughter, Tennessee, she of the wonderful and awesome The Like.) This motley crew recorded that one track, and went on to record two other Elvis compostions for kicks, they had so much fun. Costello realized he didn’t really hate recording, bashed out a batch of new tunes and re-banded The Imposters -including Lewis and Tennessee- and hit the studio, laying down eight songs in six days, an uncharacteristically quick time frame for the man.
It shows.
Now...
6 | MOMOFUKU.
Momfuku is a quick-sounding record. (By the way, record is the right word here... Initially the album’s been released solely on vinyl. “The way God meant it,” says Costello. With the record you get a code for a free digital download of all the songs...)
It’s not speedy, no, but it is ragged. And not ragged in a Neil Young kind of way, so that it sounds like he just might not have cared enough to get it right. (Sometimes I picture Neil Young in the studio saying “Whatever. Good enough. We’ll just call it aesthetic.”)
It kicks off with the killer “No Hiding Place, and the assertion “In the not very distant future when everything will be free, there won't be any cute secrets let alone any novelty.” Immediately you’ll notice that our hero is in fine voice, and the band is in insanely fine form, sounding like a bunch of twenty year olds in their parent’s garage, albeit incredibly talented twenty-year olds. The song is all ringing chords and insistent drums, a fine vocal floating wistfully above on a cloud of maybe insolence. “Two lovers rocking up and down, in an elevator; 15 minutes later they'll make a killing in the market. They knew how to work it on that closed circuit. My, my, it's a terrible disgrace! You'll find these days that there's no hiding place!”
Costello’s always been a songwriter it’s best to listen to with a lyric sheet spread out in front of you, and Momofuku is no exception to this. It’s rife with daft... Err, deft... wordplay, both beautiful and frightening. On the borderline-samba, “Harry Worth,” he sings of a newlywed couple he “met on their wedding night, their faces all flushed with their pledges lite.” He wants to tell them “It’s not very far from tears to mirth,” and that “there are not many moments that can capture your breath,” but he just can’t bring himself to do so. Lyrically, Costello has found a softer touch this time out, sprinkling a touch of -dare I say it?- gentleness amongst the bitterness. In the second half of “Harry Worth” he revisits his wedded couple and sings “Five years have passed. I happened along. He says ‘Do you hear that noise? Well, that once was our song.’ I looked in her eyes and saw barely a spark. He laughed too loud and then drank until dark.” Where in the past this might have been delivered with a touch of serves-’em-right in his voice, here it’s downright pitying, and with a pang of regret for not having spoken up all those years earlier.
In “Flutter and Wow,” he declares “I can’t believe that this is happening! You make the motor in me flutter and wow.” It’s the kind of unbridled lovey sentiment that’s generally only shown itself in Costello’s songs for soundtracks, but it’s a welcome addition to the palette.
“My Three Sons,” is like Costello’s “Cats In the Cradle.” “Deep in the night I turn cold and sick, but I only curse arithmetic. I bless the day that you came to be, with everything that is left in me.” In the hands of James Taylor or James Blunt the words would be typical and insufferable pap, but by Costello they take on an air of he-wouldn’t-say-it-if-it-wasn’t-so. It’s a true moment that brings into sharp focus his gift as a writer, but also his -and our- mortality. “Just see what I’ve become: The humbled father of my three sons.”
NOTE: Costello does in fact have three sons; one with his first wife Cait O’Riordan, and twins with jazz singer Diana Krall.
“American Gangster Time” is the most early-Costello sounding thing he’s done since he was, well, early-Costello. “It’s a drag saluting that starry rag,” he sings, that classic vitriole; the lyric isn’t sung with a sneer though, but almost sweetly. A spoonful of sugar... Thank God I’m not American is the subtext.
As “Stella Hurt” kicks in you might be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally tripped into a Husker Du album; with it’s crunchy, distorted guitars, the song is menacing. “The gutter’s full of suicides,” he sings of the city. “Don’t bring me down!” It’s more raw and musically vicious than anything I can remember him doing before, and it sounds not silly at all. So many of the old guard record songs like this for the wrong reasons. I saw the third-tier early-80’s punk band Ugly Ducklings play a reunion a couple of years ago. They had their guitars cranked and distorted and they hit the right chords, and the punk sneer was in tact and all... But they seemed quite frankly like old men playing kid’s music. Elvis Costello does not. Maybe it’s owing to the fact that he and his Imposters are just undoubtedly a better band technically, but part of it surely must be that they still have so much to offer. They’re not retreading anything, even when you might think they are. They’re always discovering and rediscovering, and they don’t add shit to songs to make them sound cooler or to fit in. If there’s distortion it’s because it’s what the song demands.
“Mr. Feathers” is Costello doing McCartney by way of Tom Waits. It’s a skewed “Eleanor Rigby,” as though a song with the lyric “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” needs any more skewing... “She passed him out in the street; he suddenly seems so frail, as her fast heart beats. She should kick him anyway.”
The album closes with the joyous "Go Away," one of the most purely fun songs Costello has in his arsenal, with a bitter chorus -"Go away, go away, why don't you go away? Why don't you come back, baby? Why won't you go away?"- that could be a little poke at his own bitter rep. The back-up vocals by Jenny Lewis sound like they could be by the ladies from B-52's, which is a good thing. Its a great thing.
For my money, the only slight misstep -and slight it is- is the arrangement of “Drum and Bone,” which sounds too reserved next to the rest of the disc and against it’s own better judgment. It’s all low-end and acoustic guitar, sounding like it wants to rock out and get jiggy, but never being given the opportunity. The song itself is fine, a slice of semi-blues, but the performing of it is maybe a bit of a missed opportunity.
The album is essentially a road map of Costello’s pop career, touching on and matching all he’s done before. He’s never outshone by his legacy. He’s paying tribute to it and doing so in the best way possible: By adding to it. He’s not going gracefully, or settling in the way, in my opinion, Bob Dylan has, as good as Dylan’s writing remains.
Elvis Costello isn’t prepared or built to become a museum piece. Thankfully.
The word genius gets tossed around like a frisbee in reviews of and discussions about music. Eminem is a genius, and so was Tupac Shakur; Win Butler from Arcade Fire is a genius; Bruce Springsteen is a genius; Ben Gibbard? Genius. Maybe not the genius that is Ryan Adams, but genius nonetheless... But let’s be honest and clear: None of those people are geniuses. None of them. Some have had moments of brilliance, but geniuses? Bruce touched on it all over Nebraska. Eminem hit upon genius in the final verse of “White America,” and in a few other places over the years. Arcade Fire have done some good, but they’re too indebted to David Byrne and Talking Heads to be considered anything close to genius in their own right. (David Byrne? Close, very close to genius...) Ben Gibbard is more the Carrot Top of Rock than he is it’s Stephen Hawking. Ryan Adams hasn’t exactly become a complete failure since his bright start, but he’s become something maybe much worse: Middling. By my count there are only four bonafide, genuine living geniuses in the world of pop music. The first is the cute Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney. Add to him Ray Davies of The Kinks... I think anyone of sane mind would have to concede Bob Dylan.
The forth, and perhaps most pronounced genius in the game is none other than Mr. Elvis Costello, the original angry young man.
2 | IT AIN’T EASY.
Being a genius has got to be hard work.
In his forties, when Elvis Costello decided to write classical music, he taught himself how to read and write musical notation.
He’s written jazz, blues, soul, country, and pop in about nine-hundred different styles, and he’s quite literally excelled at all of it at one time or another. Like McCartney, Costello’s had a couple of burn-outs (Kojak Variety, I’m looking at you) but the burn-outs have helped define him as much as the successes. And besides, you can’t be a genius without failing a few times, especially when the failures have been at the hands of experimentation and the furthering of one’s craft.
Rock is his bread and butter. It’s his house. It’s where he lives. He hasn’t had many failures when plugged into his amp and kicking out jams with his trusty co-horts. He’s had his periods of lesser marvels, but he’s never been less than interesting when dabbling in pop music.
3 | A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY.
When he came onto the scene in 1977 he was heavily associated with the punk movement, despite not being punk, all because of his energy, and anger. He took the drive of The Ramones and mixed it up with the sounds of Motown and Buddy Holly... All of which are American, come to think of it, which is funny for one of the most quintessential of British songwriters...He was the leader of The Angry Young Man movement, with Joe Jackson, Graham Parker and Marshall Crenshaw as his followers.
His debut, My Aim is True, is a true classic, causing quite the stir, not just for the music contained therein, but also for the album sleeves repeated proclamation that “ELVIS IS KING,” coming so shortly after the death of Elvis Presley as it did.
As he matured he became more of a craftsman. His music became more thoughtful, his incredible wordplay becoming even more incredible, taking a much more central position on his palette. He became more. He started out important, but became essential. It’s no overstatement to say that the landscape of modern pop music would look vastly different had there been no Elvis Costello, as much as had there been -God forbid- no Buddy Holly.
4 | LATTER DAYS.
For over a decade now, each new Costello rock album -now backed by the Imposters rather than his classic Attractions, though the two bands share a majority of members- has been greeted as a return to form for the now angry old man. The consistency of such claims borders on the absurd, though not because they are so overly boisterous in their insistence that he’s returned to form, but for the fact that Elvis Costello: The Rock Star has never really been out of form. As I said, there have been better albums and worser ones, but he’s never fallen to the depths of, say, 1980’s Bob Dylan...
It’s arguable that his 1995 release, Blood & Chocolate -featuring such gems as “Uncomplicated,” "I Hope You’re Happy Now,” "Battered Old Bird,” and “I Want You,” each of which much certainly be counted among the master’s best (and most embittered) compositions- is Costello’s best album period. Even later than that is the wonderful Brutal Youth, and the near perfect When I Was Cruel. Both albums added to a stunning catalogue songs that were every bit as everything as the man’s earliest songs: They were as angry, as eloquent, as magical, as soulful, as inventive, as well crafted as “Alison,” or “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” or “Pump It Up.”
And now comes Momofuku.
It’s being called a return to form. Costello is described as re-invigorated. It’s an album in the “classic Costello style,” whatever the hell that is.
5 | MOMOFUKU.
Here is something: It IS an album in the classic Costello style. Whatever the hell that is.
But, wait... Let’s jump back a bit.
5 | OUT OF RETIREMENT.
A couple of years -two?- ago Elvis Costello had quietly retired from recording his pop music. He was sick and tired of what came with promotion and dealing with record labels in general. In early 2008 he went into the studio to record some songs with Jenny Lewis, she of The Watson Twins fame.
Lewis, by some twist of fate, had drafted The Imposters’ rhythm section to play on some songs on her new album, and somehow or other Costello got roped into singing along with her on one of them. (These sessions also included drummer Pete Thomas’ daughter, Tennessee, she of the wonderful and awesome The Like.) This motley crew recorded that one track, and went on to record two other Elvis compostions for kicks, they had so much fun. Costello realized he didn’t really hate recording, bashed out a batch of new tunes and re-banded The Imposters -including Lewis and Tennessee- and hit the studio, laying down eight songs in six days, an uncharacteristically quick time frame for the man.
It shows.
Now...
6 | MOMOFUKU.
Momfuku is a quick-sounding record. (By the way, record is the right word here... Initially the album’s been released solely on vinyl. “The way God meant it,” says Costello. With the record you get a code for a free digital download of all the songs...)
It’s not speedy, no, but it is ragged. And not ragged in a Neil Young kind of way, so that it sounds like he just might not have cared enough to get it right. (Sometimes I picture Neil Young in the studio saying “Whatever. Good enough. We’ll just call it aesthetic.”) It kicks off with the killer “No Hiding Place, and the assertion “In the not very distant future when everything will be free, there won't be any cute secrets let alone any novelty.” Immediately you’ll notice that our hero is in fine voice, and the band is in insanely fine form, sounding like a bunch of twenty year olds in their parent’s garage, albeit incredibly talented twenty-year olds. The song is all ringing chords and insistent drums, a fine vocal floating wistfully above on a cloud of maybe insolence. “Two lovers rocking up and down, in an elevator; 15 minutes later they'll make a killing in the market. They knew how to work it on that closed circuit. My, my, it's a terrible disgrace! You'll find these days that there's no hiding place!”
Costello’s always been a songwriter it’s best to listen to with a lyric sheet spread out in front of you, and Momofuku is no exception to this. It’s rife with daft... Err, deft... wordplay, both beautiful and frightening. On the borderline-samba, “Harry Worth,” he sings of a newlywed couple he “met on their wedding night, their faces all flushed with their pledges lite.” He wants to tell them “It’s not very far from tears to mirth,” and that “there are not many moments that can capture your breath,” but he just can’t bring himself to do so. Lyrically, Costello has found a softer touch this time out, sprinkling a touch of -dare I say it?- gentleness amongst the bitterness. In the second half of “Harry Worth” he revisits his wedded couple and sings “Five years have passed. I happened along. He says ‘Do you hear that noise? Well, that once was our song.’ I looked in her eyes and saw barely a spark. He laughed too loud and then drank until dark.” Where in the past this might have been delivered with a touch of serves-’em-right in his voice, here it’s downright pitying, and with a pang of regret for not having spoken up all those years earlier.
In “Flutter and Wow,” he declares “I can’t believe that this is happening! You make the motor in me flutter and wow.” It’s the kind of unbridled lovey sentiment that’s generally only shown itself in Costello’s songs for soundtracks, but it’s a welcome addition to the palette.
“My Three Sons,” is like Costello’s “Cats In the Cradle.” “Deep in the night I turn cold and sick, but I only curse arithmetic. I bless the day that you came to be, with everything that is left in me.” In the hands of James Taylor or James Blunt the words would be typical and insufferable pap, but by Costello they take on an air of he-wouldn’t-say-it-if-it-wasn’t-so. It’s a true moment that brings into sharp focus his gift as a writer, but also his -and our- mortality. “Just see what I’ve become: The humbled father of my three sons.”
NOTE: Costello does in fact have three sons; one with his first wife Cait O’Riordan, and twins with jazz singer Diana Krall.
“American Gangster Time” is the most early-Costello sounding thing he’s done since he was, well, early-Costello. “It’s a drag saluting that starry rag,” he sings, that classic vitriole; the lyric isn’t sung with a sneer though, but almost sweetly. A spoonful of sugar... Thank God I’m not American is the subtext.
As “Stella Hurt” kicks in you might be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally tripped into a Husker Du album; with it’s crunchy, distorted guitars, the song is menacing. “The gutter’s full of suicides,” he sings of the city. “Don’t bring me down!” It’s more raw and musically vicious than anything I can remember him doing before, and it sounds not silly at all. So many of the old guard record songs like this for the wrong reasons. I saw the third-tier early-80’s punk band Ugly Ducklings play a reunion a couple of years ago. They had their guitars cranked and distorted and they hit the right chords, and the punk sneer was in tact and all... But they seemed quite frankly like old men playing kid’s music. Elvis Costello does not. Maybe it’s owing to the fact that he and his Imposters are just undoubtedly a better band technically, but part of it surely must be that they still have so much to offer. They’re not retreading anything, even when you might think they are. They’re always discovering and rediscovering, and they don’t add shit to songs to make them sound cooler or to fit in. If there’s distortion it’s because it’s what the song demands.
“Mr. Feathers” is Costello doing McCartney by way of Tom Waits. It’s a skewed “Eleanor Rigby,” as though a song with the lyric “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” needs any more skewing... “She passed him out in the street; he suddenly seems so frail, as her fast heart beats. She should kick him anyway.”
The album closes with the joyous "Go Away," one of the most purely fun songs Costello has in his arsenal, with a bitter chorus -"Go away, go away, why don't you go away? Why don't you come back, baby? Why won't you go away?"- that could be a little poke at his own bitter rep. The back-up vocals by Jenny Lewis sound like they could be by the ladies from B-52's, which is a good thing. Its a great thing.
For my money, the only slight misstep -and slight it is- is the arrangement of “Drum and Bone,” which sounds too reserved next to the rest of the disc and against it’s own better judgment. It’s all low-end and acoustic guitar, sounding like it wants to rock out and get jiggy, but never being given the opportunity. The song itself is fine, a slice of semi-blues, but the performing of it is maybe a bit of a missed opportunity.
The album is essentially a road map of Costello’s pop career, touching on and matching all he’s done before. He’s never outshone by his legacy. He’s paying tribute to it and doing so in the best way possible: By adding to it. He’s not going gracefully, or settling in the way, in my opinion, Bob Dylan has, as good as Dylan’s writing remains.
Elvis Costello isn’t prepared or built to become a museum piece. Thankfully.
2 comments:
You do realize htat Blood & Chocolate was originally released in 1986, right?
My bad. I'd intended to write 1985 instead, but as youpoint out that would still have been off by a year.
You do realize that the "h" in "that" is supposed to come after tha first "t," right?
Just kidding.
Thanks for the correction.
Post a Comment