Musically, Armed Forces is Elvis Costello’s first truly “modern” record, packed with synths and oddball sound loops. It’s the New Wave-iest of Costello’s New Wave period. And if the record is a bit dated, it’s wonderfully so.
Production aside, Armed Forces boasts a fine collection of tunes. One of my favorite Costello tracks, ‘Two Little Hitlers,’ already found a home on the blog in early 2009. I rank that little-known song (to casual fans, anyway) right up there with Costello’s best.
Better known is the single ‘Oliver’s Army,’ which hides its overt political message behind one of Costello’s catchiest melodies to date. How many unaware music fans caught themselves bopping along happily to lines like these?
He didn’t crack a smile
But it’s no laughing party
When you’ve been on the murder mile
Only takes one itchy trigger
One more widow, one less white nigger
Perhaps the catchiest song on Armed Forces is opening track ‘Accident Will Happen,’ and it, too, piles on the sugar to help the bile go down. The battle of the sexes described here likely left no survivors.
Though he says he’ll wait forever
It’s now or never
But she keeps him hanging on
The silly champion
She says she can’t go home
Without a chaperone
Accidents will happen
We only hit and run
He used to be your victim
Now you’re not the only one
Accidents will happen
We only hit and run
I don’t want to hear it
‘Cause I know what I’ve done
There’s so many fish in the sea
That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury
But they keep you hanging on
They say you’re so young
Your mind is made up but your mouth is undone
(Chorus)
And it’s the damage that we do
And never know
It’s the words that we don’t say
That scare me so
There’s so many people to see
So many people you can check up on
And add to your collection
But they keep you hanging on
Until you’re well hung
Your mouth is made up but your mind is undone
(Chorus)
I know, I know, (repeat)
Meet Me In Montauk 
Cool little video there. Never saw that before.
This weekend SOTD choices have caused me to examine just how little I really know about any of the Costello songs I know well, let alone those with which I only have a passing familiarity. While I’m typically quite intent on listening carefully to, even analyzing, the lyrics of a song, I somehow have a different musical relationship with Costello.
I’m not sure whether that’s because I found the first few songs of his I listened to particularly oblique, so I gave up trying. Or because I never, for whatever reason (what would the reason be?) tried all that hard to make the lyrics out or to attempt to interpret them.
For starters, I wasn’t the one purchasing the Costello albums, so I didn’t tend to pore over the liner notes the way I did for the music I had sought out myself. I also tended not to listen to his albums alone, when such quiet contemplation and attention is easier. Usually I would listen to his music with Dana, while on a road trip, with a group of people, while talking. In other words, the music was there, and I likely was humming along and dancing to lyrics I had no clue were saying what they say. In fact, these past couple of weekends may be the first time I’ve ever READ a Costello song (with the exception of “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror” and some other songs I’ve wanted to share with my classes over the years).
So… thanks for these weekends. I often still don’t have a strong sense of what Costello is talking about, but at least now I know to be ashamed 😉
I have to join Amy’s confession. I often don’t understand exactly what EC is singing about. And I suspect that even Clay, who probably makes a more concentrated effort to figure it out, doesn’t always get what EC is saying. I think sometimes the lyrical confusion stems from the British colloquialisms and themes, sometimes it stems from the lyrics being buried a bit under layers of instrumentation. In any event, I don’t think Amy is alone in her failure to get what EC is singing.
Now, as for today’s song, although I can see that it is essentially a commentary on the instability of relationships, yet, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I always felt the song was about something more than that, something somehow political or philosophically deeper. I think that’s what is so wonderful about EC’s lyrics– they are just opaque enough to seem like what he is singing about is really important, even if it’s really not.
Anyway, as I said yesterday, today’s SOTD remains as one of my favorite of his songs. It is with this song and this album that EC really started putting Steve Nieve’s piano work into the forefront of the mix and, for me, that was a really great thing.
I completely agree that much of the time I’m at a loss as to what Costello’s songs mean. More often it’s a very clever turn of phrase that grabs me than a whole lyric.
Whew! I feel so much better now.
I think all of EC’s fans share this same wonderful problem — loving some songs and not really knowing what’s happening inside them. Part of it is just the unbelievable density of the songs, lyrically and musically (for as respected as the Attractions are, they are even better than their rep).
But Mr. DPA MacManus — an Irish lad growing up in Liverpool — always had an exceptional verbal dexterity, but also floods his songs in arcane Britishisms that even Brits don’t get.
Dana, do you remember us interrogating our Cambridge professors about some of his phrases that baffled us? ‘The one over the eight seems less like one and more like four’ or ‘secondary modern’ or ‘send all your friends to Coventry’ and dozens more?
But Clay is right that there are always more than enough clever turns of phrase to keep one drawn in even without getting the bigger picture: ust from this song, look at the line about fish and mercury rising (evoking the rising heat of a thermometer, passion in a relationship and the late-70s concern with toxic mercury levels in fish) — all that packed into two lines that sing beautifully (and that get sung briefly by Elliot’s older brother in ET)!
Great song, great album, great choice.
Yep, Ned, I do remember.And had you not loaned me those two EC mix tapes in Cambridge, my musical life would have never been the same, and, by proxy, neither would have Clay’s as I subsequently introduced him to EC about a year or so later. So, thank you:)