LaRM day 91 (Elvis Costello)

Lots of high quality Elvis Costello today, beginning with debut album, My Aim Is True (1977). It took me a long time to get to grips with the old-fashioned rock and roll stylings of My Aim Is True. Of all Costello's albums it's the closest to the original Stiff records schema as set out by Nick Lowe, Rachel Sweet, etc. The Buddy Holly look and the geek stance, it's all a bit arch, but there's just no denying how superb most of the songs on My Aim Is True are. The best by far are the ones that point to where Costello would go next with the Attractions - 'Alison', 'The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes', 'Less Than Zero', they're all ace. The duds are those that stick closest to the rock and roll format, and so tunes like 'Sneaky Feelings', 'Mystery Dance' and 'Blame It On Cain' still leave me a bit cold. When it's good it's really, really good though. Pretty much simultaneous to the release of My Aim Is True, the non-LP single 'Watching the Detectives' was released. As a slight anomoly for Costello's style at the time it's a strange but classic pop song. The faint reggae traces in the background really drive the song and it's no surprise it was a big hit at the time, in a way that none of the songs from the album could have hoped to be. All the Costello albums I've got are late 90's CD reissues with tons of bonus material and the extras on My Aim Is True are interesting but highlight the rather quaintly old-fashioned style in which the songs were originally structured and it's not stuff that appeals to me much.

Second album (and first with the Attractions), This Year's Model (1978), I consider to be a dramatic leap forward with much stronger songwriting and a much more singular identity. There's some absolutely fantastic stuff on This Year's Model. In fact there's not a single low point, and from the second 'No Action' starts you can hear how confident and brutally self-assured Costello and his band were. The pace never lets up and neither does the vicious sarcasm, the arrogant musicianship and superb songwriting. Costello's lyrics are at their biting best and pretty everything that happened in the smarter end of Britpop was ripped off of This Year's Model (but obviously done much worse). It's an absolutely invigorating pop record with absolutely no cracks in its bloody-mindedness. Song after song is a belter, 'Pump It Up', 'You Belong To Me', 'I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea' it's an album almost overloaded with great songs. Amongst the bunch of extras is the grand non-LP single 'Radio Radio'.

A slightly more mixed affair, but still mind-boggingly confident, is follow-up Armed Forces (1979). The best stuff on Armed Forces is some of the best of Costello's entire career ('Green Shirt', 'Big Boys','Party Girl', all absolutely fabulous) but the erratic stylistic focus means that it's hard to really get a handle on the album and it sometimes feels more like a compilation than a unified album. The down moments can be a bit trying ('Goon Squad', 'Two Little Hitlers') and it's an album that sometimes feels a little like it's over-reaching. However, those quibbles inaccurately imply that it's not a superb album - it is a superb album. The extras are less impressive than those on This Year's Model but they're still pretty ace with a great extended live version of 'Watching the Detectives' amongst the various B-sides.

Perhaps the highlight of Costello's album work was the massive show-off of Get Happy! (1980) in which he demonstrated that virtually no form of pop based music was outside his remit or his ability. Most of the songs on Get Happy! barely last longer than two minutes, there are 10 songs a side and each one is a golden nugget of pop smarts. The soul and R&B influences which stand proud throughout the album are nonetheless filtered through Costello's nerdy white boy persona and every song is a testament to being clever enough to fully understand the intent behind your influences while having the self-confidence to bend them to your own will. These are just great pop songs and the whole album is one of the best of its period, standing outside the prevailing post-punk trends while not conforming for one second to anyone else's notion of what rock music should be doing at that time. The extra eleven tracks (31!) on the CD include some decent B-sides and rarities, including Costello's version of 'Girl Talk'.

Last up for today is 1981's Trust, which is in some ways the last album of the early phase of Costello's career, and the last that follows for the most part a particular type of new-wavy sound and general style. Trust is possibly the weakest of the first five albums overall but it does still have some fantastic songs in 'Clubland', 'Lovers Walk' and 'New Lace Sleeves'. In fact the only reason it seems like a slightly weaker entry in the Costello canon is because familiarity has started to set in, the album itself is actually remarkably strong for a fifth album in as many years. There are some treading water moments in 'Luxembourg' and 'Different Finger' and to my mind the torch song effort 'Shot With His Own Gun' is a misfire (sorry). There is an overall sense of bitter cynicism to the album also, probably due to the heavy drinking and political frustration the whole band were indulging in, combined with Costello's determination to prove that whatever any other bands were doing at the time, he could better (hence a number of the songs on Trust being modelled on songs by XTC, the Police, the Pretenders, etc), but in truth he was always best at doing his own thing. Nonetheless, it's still a fabulous album that in some ways seems to improve with age, as our collective cynicism scales the heights of Costello's.