In 1981, Elvis Costello kept up his album-a-year pace and released Trust. The album was the polar opposite of Get Happy!! — the focused and consistent R&B of the earlier record replaced by a stylistic smorgasbord.
Trust skips between pop, rock, jazz and country, occasionally within the same song. It’s an explosion of creativity that paved the way for Costello’s future musical experimentation and, for my money, his fourth or fifth best album.
I’ve featured two tracks from Trust on the blog already. One was ‘Shot With His Own Gun,’ an intense piano ballad with disturbing sexual imagery.
The other was ‘New Lace Sleeves,’ the album’s centerpiece and one of Costello’s very best songs.
Today I’m featuring the album’s opener, ‘Clubland,’ a fabulous and intricate track that perfectly sets the stage for the album to follow.
You’re going off limits
Going off duty
Going off the rails
Going off with booty
They tell tales of fiction found on all the criminal types
Lead to a higher ranking man or a face with thin red stripes
Chorus:
The boys next door
The mums and dads
New weds and nearly-deads
Have you ever been had in Clubland?
There’s a piece in someone’s pocket to do the dirty work
You’ve come to shoot the pony
They’ve come to do the jerk
They leave him half way to paradise
They leave you half way to bliss
The ladies’ invitation never seemed like this
Chorus
The long arm of the law slides up the outskirts of town
Meanwhile in Clubland they are ready to pull them down
The right to work is traded in for the right to refuse admission
Don’t pass out now, there’s no refund
Did you find out what you were missing
The crowd is taking forty winks minus ten percent
You barely get required sleep to go lingering with contempt
Thursday to Saturday
Money’s gone already
Some things come in common these days
Your hands and work aren’t steady
Meet Me In Montauk 
Ah, what can I say…as great as the preceding albums were, THIS is where my love affair with EC began. I find this album intoxicating from start to finish and it features my favorite EC song of all time in “New Lace Sleeves.”
Since you’ve already featured “Sleeves” and “Shot….” this is a great choice for SOTD. Just listen to those drums, that piano, those lyrics! Just wonderful!
This is the Elvis Costello I know and love. While I was listening to his new album, I wondered what his songs would sound like sung by someone else. Has there ever been a Costello cover album? I’d be intrigued to hear another’s take on some of these songs. How about Krall does Costello? Sexy, funny, and, I bet, brilliant!
yes, there have been cover albums, and we own one of them, Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours & Rendezvous.