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.
In writing advance posts for my Elvis Costello Weekends, I recently revisited Almost Blue, his 1981 album of country covers.
It was five years before he would infuse those country influences into his own songs on King of America. It was 18 years after that that he explored country blues on The Delivery Man. And four years later he paired up with rootsy producer T Bone Burnett for the country/bluegrass album Secret, Profane and Sugarcane.
Costello doesn’t like to repeat himself. If you want an inkling of what to expect from him next, the very last place you should start is whatever it is he just finished.
When he’s on top of his game, Elvis Costello has no equal as a lyricist. His ability to twist and turn the English language, to fracture and reassemble puns and cliches with devilish glee, borders on the surreal. Particularly on his early albums, Costello’s wordplay is almost frighteningly intricate.
To quote a song on a future Costello album, he calls to mind “a chainsaw running through a dictionary.”
For all of that lyrical ingenuity, or perhaps because of it, it’s often nearly impossible to tell what Costello’s songs are actually about. Often I’ll find myself thinking, “These lyrics are amazing… if only I knew what the hell they meant.”
During my Bob Dylan Weekends, I wrote often about my Dylan Six — the six of his albums that I put on a pedestal high above the rest.
In the case of Elvis Costello, I have a Costello Three. That’s not to dismiss the other 15+ albums he’s released — many of those are classics in their own right — but three of them are simply on another level.
The first of the three, as you’ve no doubt guessed, is Get Happy!!.
Recorded in late 1979 with The Attractions and released in early 1980, Get Happy!! was a departure from the punk pop sounds of his first three albums. This was an R&B/soul record, right down to the retro album cover.
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.
Meet Me In Montauk 