And at the start of Blood, Costello let us know we’re still submerged in the dregs of the emotional bloodbath that was and is still to be, that we’re in for an as yet undefined ordeal for the long-haul: “You think it’s over now, but we’ve only just begun,” he promises in the first song, "Uncomplicated," and between that call and the response in the album’s boisterous last track (“Next Time ‘Round”), the singer finds himself increasingly bloodied and bowed, acquiescing to “your elastic love, this velvet-lined purgatory." Between beginning and end, though, there’s a lot of ground to cover, upon which Costello variously grandstands and grovels.
Even those songs replete with trademark hook-filled infectiousness don’t go too long without the sweetness and light becoming rubble in the ruins. Sinking down in the “Blue Chair," you "say that your love lasts forever when you know the night is just hours”; in “Crimes of Paris,” you’re only "as good as your word and that’s no good to her.”
But in the turntable spittle of the more overt and vitriolic angry youngish man songs, Costello seethes in a way that is positively 4th-Street, as in “I Hope You're Happy Now,” where he fairly relishes in the knowledge that “this’ll hurt you more than it hurts me.” In “Battered Old Bird,” the narrator, among others who “swallows sleeping pills like dreams,” takes his pessimism about life and the people in his, to an extreme:
Well here’s a boy if ever there was
Who’s going to do bad things
That’s what they all say and that’s how the trouble begins.
I’ve seen them rise and fall
Been through their big deals and smalls
He better have a dream that goes beyond four walls.”
You think he should be sent outside playing with the traffic
When pieces of him are already scattered in the attic.
Some of those “dreams beyond four walls” become a hynagogic hell - darkly Bosch-ian enough, though sometimes cartoonishly and too-senselessly so. In the desolation row of “Tokyo Storm Warning,” a stream-of-consciousness marathon run-on of evocative surrealism and spite that is the most antithetical — in structure and spirit — to anything on King of America, Costello explicates the contention that “We’ve always been like worlds apart, now your seeing two nightmares collide,” bringing into the mix Disney abattoirs, KKK conventions, “dead Italian tourists bodies [that] litter up the Broadway,” and “Japanese God-Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes.” Is it any wonder, then, that “the world is a joke” wherein “Death wears a big hat ‘cause he’s a big bloke . . . We’re only living this instant.”
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
Great take on this, Gordon. Blood & Chocolate is one of my top three Costello favorites, the other two being This Year's Model and whichever happens to be my third favorite this week.
2 - Vern Halen
Tokyo Storm Warning is a great tune from B&C too. I liked this way better than King of America. In fact, although there have been nice moments throughout his career, this for me might be the last great Elvis album.
3 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Lisa--thanks for the comment. I also have a revolving door of favorites, usually with This Year's Model and Armed Forces (which share in a 6-way tie for #1 best LP ever from anyone), but also B&C Get Happy and Trust edge their way in, too.
4 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Vern--don't give up hope: just think what'll happen if EC & Diana Krall get divored--there will no doubt be a "really, really pissed-off divorcees' version of Blood and Chocolate" (not that I wish this prospect on them)
I also have an appreciation for much of his more recent more-tangential projects, but there's some good high fueled tracks from the inconsistent "When I Was Cruel" and "Brutal Youth." You are right about "Blood" vs. "King"--though there are some choice cuts on King, I'm more apt to grab Blood and Chocolate when I'm in the mood for some older works. Thanks for the comment.
5 - Andy
B&C is the closing of the door on the "angry" Elvis years. But to say that the years after this have been lacking is just not paying attention. While most post 1986 albums have tunes that are not on par with his greatest works, the music is 99% better than most musicians output. Albums like Spike, The Juliet Letters, Brutal Youth and even last years The Delivery Man give me as much pleasure as his earlier songs.
6 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Andy--you touched upon the most truthful statement that I shoud've mentioned: even the most lacking of EC's songs is considerably better than the best of most other artists. Thanks.