It’s funny that I’ve described Elvis Costello’s Secret, Profane and Sugarcane as “modest” and “minor” by his standards.
The opening track, ‘Down Among the Wine and Spirits,’ is introduced like this in the album’s elegant liner notes: “A Former-Champion Prize fighter Discovers His Name Printed Just Above The Liquor Licensee.”
Other songs on the album have similar introductory explainers: “A Dissatisfied Woman Fears Talking In Her Sleep,” “P.T. Barnum Reads An Abolitionist Pamphlet While Manufacturing Souvenirs Of The All-American Tour,” “Profane Adaptation Of Pious Song Performed By Acclaimed Nightingale,” you get the picture.
Yes, even when he’s slumming, Costello’s brain seems to run on overdrive. He bends the English language to his will and we’re all the better for it, even if we often have no idea what the hell he’s talking about.
Where a man gets what he merits
Once it was written in letters ’bout nine feet tall
Now he sees how far he’s fallen
Since he set his mind on her completely
But then I guess that you couldn’t have seen him lately
Walking around with a pain that just never ceases
He starts to speak and then he goes to pieces
Down among the wines and spirits
Where a man gets what he merits
Lives with the echoing words of their final quarrel
The vacant chamber
The empty barrel
But as he picks himself up from a sawdust floor
Clicks his fingers to that swinging door
Suddenly he’s calling out, More, more, more!
I’m twice the foolish man I was before
Down among the wines and spirits
Bubbles escaping from him at the rim a glass of grape
She sails through his memory just like a ship of shapely
And then as it started sink he drowns his sorrows
That fill his nights and empty tomorrows
But as he picks himself up from a sawdust floor
Clicks his fingers to that swinging door
Suddenly he’s calling out, More, more, more!
Speaks of invisible things he hardly credits
Down among
Down among the wines and spirits
Meet Me In Montauk 
I suppose there are two different camps of lyricists–those who sing about their personal experiences and feelings, and those who observe life and tell stories. Elvis, by and large, falls into the latter category.
I’m fascinated by that type of writing because, back in the day when i would try to compose lyrics, I always seemed to write more about personal experiences and feelings, and that is, I think, far more limiting ultimately. As they say, there are a million stories in the naked city and if you have the ability to be a great observer of life and the oddities of human behavior, I suppose your pool of material will never dry up.
Perhaps this explains why Elvis is so endlessly prolific and so often enigmatic. Those liner notes are helpful to get a glimpse into what Elvis is thinking/observing and to get some frame of reference, though I still remain largely baffled as to what the hell he is talking about.