Elvis Costello: Spike

Elvis Costello: Spike

1989

Warner Bros Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. ...This Town...  2. Let Him Dangle  3. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror  4. Veronica  5. God's Comic  6. Chewing Gum  7. Tramp the Dirt Down  8. Stalin Malone  9. Satellite  10.  Pads, Paws and Claws  11. Baby Plays Around  12. Miss Macbeth  13. Any King's Shilling  14. Coal-Train Robberies  15. Last Boat Leaving


This album (along with "Mighty Like a Rose") is the reason I got into Elvis Costello back in Junior High School...I remembering rescuing the cassette from a K-Mart cut-out bin...Cut-out bins used to be pretty fuckin' cool, by the way...That's where you'd find all the fringe major-label artists who made records that not surprisingly, didn't sell a gazillion copies as expected...Full of Robyn Hitchcock, Lou Reed, Dead Milkmen and Elvis Costello  albums, and as a kid looking for "out-there" music, but not having much money, I always made a bee-line straight to the cut-outs...

 At the time I had some vague notion of who Elvis Costello was..I'd caught a TV appearance or two, saw the "Veronica" video...Anyway, I brought the tape home and loved it, which is pretty weird in retrospect..."Spike" is a pretty grown-up album for a metal/punk kid to latch onto, and I honestly can't think of many worse entry points into his catalog than this...I think what probably resonated with me was his snide, bitter lyrical attitude..I had no problem wrapping my mind around such sentiments as, "You're nobody till everybody in this town thinks you're poison..."  I do recall being bored out of my mind during "God's Comic" though...

Right around 2001 or so, I found a vinyl copy at PDQ Records in Tucson and decided to get reacquainted with my ol' pal "Spike," only to find we had both changed a lot over the years...God,  I now realize this album is a damn mess...I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but despite our differences, I still like ol' "Spike"...Sure he tries too hard, he's all over the place and he certainly doesn't know when to quit, but those aren't deal-breakers to me (by the way, I'm gonna stop talking about this record as if it were a real person now, since I'm even starting to creep myself out)...

 Take album-opener "...This Town..." which I loved growing up...I used to rewind it and listen to it over and over, but now I hear a pretty significant flaw...Mainly those fake drums.  I think there's a time and place for everything, even fake drums...But this song would be a drop-dead classic if it wasn't for that slight lapse in taste, but sometimes it's hard to tell when you're using the latest cutting-edge technology...

 The album plays like a portable eclectic record collection...It veers between disparate genres with no warning...You go from soul ("Deep Dark Truthful Mirror") to Stay Cats rockabilly ("Pads, Paws & Claws") to big band instrumentals ("Stalin Malone"), so it seems like it should be a little more exciting than it actually is...Unfortunately,  torch songs, New Orleans jazz  and melancholy showtunes aren't among my favorite genres...Still, there's some good tunes here...

Take "Veronica" for instance! I love this song! Everybody does! I remember it being a pretty sizable hit, thanks to a memorable video and a ridiculously catchy melody co-written with bleedin' pip-pop chappie Paul McCartney...You'd think that a dramatist like Elvis would make a song about a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's disease a morose affair, but it's so happy and poppy sounding...Making the bitter pill of the lyrics much easier too swallow...See? It's one of those yummy pills!

Like a prescription bottle full of Good & Plenty's!

I've also always had a soft spot for "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror." It's got a very adult, late night soul feel...Compare this to his earlier blue-eyed soul attempts on "Punch the Clock" and "Goodbye Cruel World" and you can really appreciate how far he came along in this style...Yea, I can see myself hangin' out at 3 am, scotch and cigars in hand nodding my head to this....

Yea, see what I mean? Adult stuff...You've got to be comfortable and secure in your life to put on a song like "Any King's Shilling" and say,"Y'know what? I don't care who knows that I like to listen to medieval lute music with mandolins and shit...It feels good on my bald spot! Y'hear me world?!?!?! I LIKE ALBUMS PRODUCED BY T-BONE BURNETT!!"

Y'know, I'm starting to think I was too harsh in my criticism of "...This Town...". It really is a good song, and certainly one of the highlights here...I just wouldn't listen to it right after "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" or anything, or your head might explode...And I think that sums up my feelings about this album, in general...I wouldn't jump into this one right away...I have a feeling if I were somehow able to push my nostalgia aside, this would probably be my, like, 16th favorite Elvis Costello album...Tracks like "God's Comic," "Chewing Gum" and "Stalin Malone" are incredibly tough for me to sit through...Shave about 20 minutes off this and it'd be a pretty solid listen, I suspect...

But let's not dwell on the negatives...It's Friday, isn't it? Here's "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror"...You might want to save this one until about 3 am, though...Enjoy....