Following the double dip in 1986, Costello waited three years to put out his next album. During that time he signed with Warner Brothers and, as he tells it in the liner notes of Spike, was given a boatload of cash to make his next album. As a result, Costello writes, he took the five potential albums swimming around in his head and put them all out as one.
Indeed, Spike suffers a bit from schizophrenia. Though it is no longer than Get Happy!, Imperial Bedroom or King of America, it lacks those records’ thematic and musical cohesion and as a result feels about twice as lengthy as it is.
In a move that’s pretty much unheard of these days, Costello followed up King of America the same year with another stellar album, Blood & Chocolate.
If Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World were steps back, the album that followed them, King of America is a huge leap forward. And that’s an understatement.
U2’s latest album has been hailed as a masterpiece in such publications as Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. It’s also been dismissed as something close to tuneless garbage by Time, Pitchfork and many in the blogosphere.
Monsters vs Aliens contains an interesting mix of contradictions. It’s shot and animated using up-to-the-minute technology but in the service of a decidedly old-fashioned story; it’s steeped in the 1950s B-movie tradition, but its premise is decidedly feminist. Even the use of 3-D technology is complex, simultaneously reaching back to the gimmicky 3-D films of the 50s while hoping to pull modern audiences away from their computer screens and back into theaters.
Meet Me In Montauk 