Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us—and hopefully you. This week: Elvis Costello, broken down by the songs that define his themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Costello's latest, Momofuku, is currently available as a vinyl-only release with a digital download code. A CD will follow May 6.
Costello 101
By the time Elvis Costello released his 1977 debut album, My Aim Is True, rock 'n' roll radio on both sides of the Atlantic was mired in an identity crisis, torn between the snooty bloat of progressive rock and the heavy thud of glorified bar bands. Meanwhile, in New York and in the UK, the pub-rock, art-rock, and punk scenes were providing an outlet for musicians and audiences looking for something smarter and more tuneful than what the major labels were paying DJs to play. But like Tom Petty in the U.S., Costello didn't really want to become a cult act or an obscurantist. He was writing catchy songs pitched directly to the pop charts. My Aim Is True's "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" is a perfect case in point: With the American country-rock band Clover loping behind him, Costello delivers a jaunty, hummable song that calls back to doo-wop, Buddy Holly, and The Byrds, while painting a picture of romantic abandonment that anyone can relate to. Much of the material on My Aim Is True is moody, pained, and even downright dark, but "Red Shoes" exemplifies how Costello turned that disgruntlement into something snappy.
"(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" by Elvis Costello
For Costello's second album, 1978's This Year's Model, he assembled The Attractions, the backing band that would be with him steadily through the next decade. A tough, tight, melodic outfit, the Attractions served as able interpreters of Costello's songs, with This Year's Model serving as an especially fine showcase. Keyboardist Steve Nieve and bassist Bruce Thomas deliver lines that could practically be melodies for other songs, but it all works anyway. This Year's Model arrived at a time which almost demanded that musicians declare their allegiances to punk or new wave. The song answered the question by refusing to answer it, apart from combining punk energy with the best new wave's attention to songcraft, a fusion never more pronounced than on the show-stopping "Pump It Up."
"Pump It Up" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Following the compressed, punchy near-punk of This Year's Model, the more florid pop of 1979's Armed Forces was a relief, even though more than ever, Costello's lyrics were preoccupied with the impossible choice between human cruelty and a lifetime of loneliness. (The album was originally going to be called Emotional Fascism—and with good reason.) Armed Forces' MVP is Steve Nieve, who fleshes out arrangements by Costello and producer Nick Lowe, helping them realize they could attempt more ambitious song structures without losing any essential catchiness. Just listen to Nieve's work on "Oliver's Army," a catchy mid-tempo number that satirizes British empire-building. While Costello spits lines like "Only takes one itchy finger / One more widow, one less white nigger," Nieve's piano ripples elegantly behind him, linking the arrogance behind colonialism to cocktail party chatter.
"Oliver's Army" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
With 1982's Imperial Bedroom, Costello tried to channel Beatles-esque ambition into sonic reality, swapping longtime producer Lowe—who had overseen all of Costello's albums apart from the Nashville side trip Almost Blue—for Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. A strangely hesitant promotional campaign featured the word "masterpiece" followed by a question mark, and though time hasn't quite removed that punctuation, it remains one of Costello's best albums. The sonic boundary-pushing meshes nicely with a set of songs united by the themes of doubt and romantic insecurity, nowhere more spectacularly than on the mini-suite "Man Out Of Time."
"Man Out Of Time" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Taking a break from the soon-to-disband Attractions, who appear on one track, Costello paired with producer T-Bone Burnett for the 1986 album King Of America. A love letter to American roots music as filtered through the record industry in the middle of the 20th century, the album finds Costello playing beside top-tier session musicians like James Burton and Jerry Scheff (both best known for playing with another Elvis) and keyboardist Mitchell Froom (later to serve as Costello's producer). It also continued the deepening of an emotional palette that he once limited to, as he told journalist Nick Kent, "revenge and guilt." King's songs range widely, from a soulful cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"—which is more Nina Simone than The Animals—to the romantic lament of "Indoor Fireworks" to "American Without Tears," a melancholy waltz filled with images of cross-cultural attraction and romantic imperialism. Mature in the best sense, it's the sound of a songwriter realizing he doesn't have to prove himself any more.
"American Without Tears" by Elvis Costello
Intermediate Work
Following the buoyant swell of his first three albums, Costello seemed to be in position to become the generation-defining pop star he'd always wanted to be—even though he still hadn't scored a big hit in the U.S., and even though his albums sold relatively modestly in the era of corporate-rock blockbusters like Boston and Frampton Comes Alive. Then one night on tour in 1979, Costello ran into Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett in a hotel bar, and in the middle of a drunken argument about traditional rock and soul vs. the emerging new wave, Costello—who had appeared on behalf of Rock Against Racism in the UK—referred to James Brown and Ray Charles as "niggers." The incident got a lot of play in the rock press, where Costello's nerdy persona and "angry young man" arrogance already made him suspect in some circles. In his first two and half years as a recording artist, Costello was a critics' darling. From 1980 on, he lost that edge.
Costello insists that "the incident" had nothing to do with his decision to make his fourth LP, Get Happy!!, an homage to the loose, exuberant music of the classic Memphis soul label Stax/Volt, but there's certainly a sense in which the album is driven by a man seeking redemption by hanging out in a recording studio and banging out songs quickly. The Costello of My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces wouldn't have released a song as seemingly slight as "B Movie," and yet what makes that song so wonderful is that it doesn't seem beholden to any particular genre or tradition. There are nods to ska, dub, and Beat poetry—and a typically magnificent performance on bass by Bruce Thomas—but pieces of the song seem to be missing, as though Costello cobbled it together from unused verses and bridges. This is no longer the sound of a man looking to make hit records; this is a man a little stung and ashamed by his brush with fame, and eager to retreat into the margins.
"B Movie" by Elvis Costello & The Attractions
But maybe not deep into the margins: The disjointed 1981 album Trust sounds like 14 different attempts to figure out where Costello's music fit in the pop landscape. It was the most uneven album he'd released to date. Its weak spots anticipated some of the dilettantism to come, but highlights like the beguilingly paranoid "Watch Your Step" smoothed over the rough spots, and breakneck numbers such as "Strict Time" and "Lovers' Walk" recalled the full-steam-ahead approach of "Pump It Up."
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