Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
The Costello Show
King Of America
(Demon, 1986)
Declan MacManus goes country. Second time lucky!
Memorably, David Lee Roth once said that rock journalists love Elvis Costello because they all look like him. But much water has flowed under the bridge since the ’80s and now I am the sole inhabitant of MOJO’s Costello bunker, fighting a one-man rearguard action on behalf of the greatest songwriter of his generation. King Of America, the case in point, is perhaps his most underrated record. Sandwiched between the patchy mainstream pop of Goodbye Cruel World and the return of the Attractions proper for Blood & Chocolate, it eased its own path into the “parenthetical” file with its confusing “Costello Show” nomenclature. Besides, this was Costello’s second stab at a country-flavoured record, and after the somewhat mannered Almost Blue, the public were once bitten, twice shy. And yet this is Costello channeling American roots music with ease – doing George Jones/Johnny Cash hangover hi-jinks on The Big Light and regulation lachrymose balladry on The Poisoned Rose. James Burton, Jerry Scheff, Earl Palmer and Ron Tutt are the Nashville legends doing their thing (various Attractions also cameo), but more tellingly still, T-Bone Burnett runs the sessions, the young veteran of The Rolling Thunder Revue posting an early marker in a career that’s gone on to garland him as the greatest modern facilitator of the country-rock crossover (recently confirmed by his fine work on Plant & Krauss’s Raising Sand). Even so, the very best bits of King… transcend homage: Costello comparing delusion and reality in Brilliant Mistake; or mixing bitterness and compassion in Little Palaces and American Without Tears; or – better yet – taking the sustained metaphor to Cole Porter levels on the exquisite, immortal Indoor Fireworks. It’s still the best love song he ever wrote.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 11:24 AM GMT 19/06/2008
Further Listening
Elvis Costello & The Imposters – The Delivery Man (Lost Highway, 2004)
Lucinda Williams – West (Lost Highway, 2007)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand (Decca, 2007)
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Previous Disc of the day
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Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
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Comments
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I dunno ... this was when I started to go off Costello. The fire and the directness of his earlier recordings is replaced here with pomposity, verbosity and lack of clarity.
Posted by Jon Dennis at 12:11 PM GMT 19/06/2008 Report Abuse
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My entry point into Costello world years ago after I'd heard him do "Little Palaces" live on Irish telly. Fine album from a man who's made more than a few and the new one's great too.
Posted by Pat Carty at 1:12 PM GMT 19/06/2008 Report Abuse
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