A year after When I Was Cruel, Costello released the only original album of his that I’ve chosen not to own — a collection of MOR ballads called North. I think I listened to the album twice before coming to terms with the fact that I’d never listen to it again. Even worse than the uninspired Goodbye Cruel World, it’s the only time in Costello’s career that he didn’t even make it out of the gate.
But a year after that debacle came another excellent album, The Delivery Man. Costello has always been a fan of concept albums and this one was conceived as a passion play starring three characters — Abel, Vivian and Geraldine. I think the story got lost somewhere along the line, or maybe these are just the songs that fill in the spaces between the dialogue we don’t get to hear… at any rate, the album doesn’t work as a play, but it definitely works as an album.
This is a Southern fried country blues album that contains some of his most muscular work to date as well as some of his most delicate. Opening song ‘Button My Lip’ is five minutes of what sounds like a drunken jam band session and closing track ‘The Scarlet Tide’ is a gently mandolin-accompanied duet with Emmylou Harris (that was written for the film Cold Mountain). The songs in between occupy many points on that spectrum.
This title song adheres more to the ‘play’ concept than most, name-dropping the characters and delivering some plot. That’s not what I like about it, though. What I like is the chorus… “In a certain light, he looked like Elvis. In a certain way, he seemed like Jesus.” Every time I hear this song I can’t get that out of my head.
Her shoulders flung forward
Her lips in a purse
She talks like the beauty that she never was
Of the fabulous wild nights that she never has
In a certain light he looked like Elvis
In a certain way he feels like Jesus
Everyone dreams of him just as they can
But he’s only the humble Delivery Man
Geraldine blushes and brushes away
The cigarette ashes that Vivian scatters
Stares out of the window at the things that she says
While gossip within her competes the widow
Ever since he’s gone, she feels like crying all the time
She knows for sure Vivian is lying
Now she has a daughter to raise as she can
And she just wouldn’t trust that Delivery Man
Ivy puts down the ghost story she’s reading
Looks up at that face on the wall
Thinking about how her father lay bleeding
Shot in the back ‘cos orders were misleading
And how a flag and a medal don’t have any meaning
On the 5th of July as they tore down the fair
And he’d seen all the local girls who were worth kissing
With the smell of the gunpowder still in air
They noticed that Abel and Ivy were missing
In a certain light he looked like Elvis
In a certain way he seemed like Jesus
He said “Why can’t you be kind to me like you were meant to be?
When they let me out, I had a brand new identity
Now everyone dreams of me just as they can
I want to be your Delivery Man”
In a certain light he looked like Elvis
In a certain way he seemed like Jesus
In a certain light he looked like Elvis
In a certain way he felt like Jesus
Meet Me In Montauk 
I know, I get that line stuck in my head also.
I don’t think North was ever on my radar. Was it comprised of original songs?
I do like Delivery Man a great deal, both the song and the album.
Here’s North:
I don’t really remember a single song from it, to be honest.
It seems to have gotten generally positive reviews. This may be the third instance where these songs sprinkled among other albums would have been more compelling.
I note, by the way, that Still is on North. That’s a very good song.