11.23.2020
ELVIS COSTELLO, “ARMED FORCES: SUPER DELUXE EDITION”
Flood Magazine: AD Amorosi: November 16th 2020
There are so many pleasures derived from Elvis Costello’s brand new album Hey Clockface—there’s the heterogeneous sound of its continental divide, recorded as it was in Paris, Helsinki, and New York, with the scent of wet pavement emanating from each track. There’s the fact that Costello has, again, managed an opulently produced brand of latter-day punk rock to go with the record’s resplendent Bacharach-driving-down-Tin Pan Alley ballads. Present on songs like “No Flag” and “We Are All Cowards Now” is Costello’s patented and prickly view on geopolitics, one that takes its root in ravaging his home’s Queen, then spreading his bile outward to other less-sovereign nations.
To say that all of these advances began in 1979 with Costello & the Attractions’ third album Armed Forces is no exaggeration. Just listen to the difference between the spunky pub rock of his debut, 1977’s My Aim Is True, and his more sinewy, garage-pop, sophomore effort, This Year’s Model from 1978, and the differences between them and Armed Forces are day, night, and a lushly European, synth-pop-heavy weekend stay-over apart. Rather than going for something minimal, claustrophobic, and stripped down, Costello, his Attractions, and their producer Nick Lowe went into maximal overdrive, opened up space in its tight sound and allowed his more paranoid views of love and politics (or metaphorical relationships between the two equally torrid topics) to blossom.