Entertainment For Lively Minds
Great albums - terrible reviews
Posted by DogFacedBoy on 23 March 2011 - 6:51pm.
So,
Elvis Costello's 'Mighty Like A Rose' got a fair pasting at the time and still gets sniffy comments when it is reissued (and reissued and reissued). I gather this is the point a lot of people think that Elvis started getting 'too big for his boots\too clever by half' with the Brodskys album just round the corner and some of the arrangements on MLAR being a bit too fancy for their liking. And of course, he had that beard.
see rest in comments section
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pt2
Opens up with the marvellous 'Other Side Of Summer' with its singalong vibe masking the nightmare visions of LA (backed with hilarious video with 'Rasputin' surrounded by pretty girls driving round in the sun in his convertiable). Has the much quoted 'Was It a millionaire who said imagine no posessions? \ a poor little schoolboy who said we don't need no lessons?' Solid classic Costello.
The album features Attractions drummer Pete Thomas but not Bruce Thomas (no relation) . The bassists 'The Big Wheel' expose on the life of a touring musician had ticked EC off a bit and someone with his history of songs about guilt and revenge that wasn't wise. 'How To be Dumb' lets him have it with both barrels
Despite all the bitterness its a pretty upbeat tune and Costello snarls and spits the lyrics with glee. The album has MarcRibot all over it with his crunchy and frayed guitar giving off a dark vibe. The Spanish tinged 'After The Fall' carries on the albums themes of love and guilt witha couple trying to rekindle their relationship after she has strayed. Its a stark and vivid picture underpinned by some fine acoustic playing by Ribot.
Two of Costello's collaborations with Macca are on the album, one great, one not so. So Like Candy is another bad relationship tale that, according to Bebe Buell, is about one of her fights with Elvis when she trashed his record collection. 'Here lie the records that she scratched and on the sleeve I find a note attached......' - its a great song that ranks up with the best that EC and PM have produced (well solo Macca then!). The other 'Playboy To A Man' may well be one of the only outright "rockers" on the album but the vocals are pitched too high and the screeching at the end makes the intro to 'Man Out Of Time' sound tuneful.
As I said people think EC got too 'clever clever' at this point with his arrangements. However if you have great players like T-Bone Wolk, Larry Knechtel and Mitchell Froom around I can hardly blame him wanting to experiment a little. Yet none of it feels like over egging the pudding to me. In fact 'Broken' relies mostly on the drone of a harmonium to underline Elvis' most grim statement - 'But if you leave me, then I am broken / And if I'm broken, then only death remains'.
The closing 'Call It Unexpected No.4' is a sheer delight with echoes of the theme he wrote for Alan Bleasdale's 'GBH'. On his 1999 tour with Steve Nieve Elvis used to close the show by performing this unamplified and on the bootlegs you can hear his feet creaking on the boards. Again its a downbeat ending couplet 'Please don't let me fear anything I cannot explain \ I can't believe, I'll never believe in anything again' but seconds earlier you can't help but smile as he croons "Well I'm the lucky goon \ Who composed this tune from birds arranged on the high wire"
Its a charity shop favourite so i would urge you to check it out for less than a pint of ale. IMHO I think MLAR is up there with Elvis' very best alongside Blood & Chocolate and Imperial Bedroom
(phew) Nice to get that off me chest!
I would try and defend 'Goodbye Cruel World' but it can be best summed up in the phrase 'good songs, insensitive arrangements\production'
How To Be Dumb
Why, precisely, do we believe HTBD is about or aimed at B.T.? Are there authoritative sources who've told us such? To me it reads as though it could just as easily be another bit of the sort of masochistic self-laceration that singer/songwriters are occasionally prone to. And I certainly don't see anything specific in the lyric that refers to, say, bassists, or the gossipy bitchy content of The Big Wheel.
Put me right though...
Its so clearly about Bruce
that to think otherwise would be perverse.
"Now you've got yourself a brand new occupation"
"You always had to dress up your envy in some half-remembered
philosophy"
"Now you're masquerading as pale powdered genius Whose ever bad intention has been purged
All point toward 'Big Wheel', Bruce's self image in the book etc
like a big neon sign. All EC himself says about the song in his usual excellent sleevenotes is
BTW I think Bruce was a brill bass player and I enjoy his book. But then I'm not in it
I love that album
had no idea it was badly thought of!
In my memory
it got some so-so 3 star crits at the time and gets a retrospective pooh poohing.
Maybe I just wanted to write a love letter to one of my fave LPs and used that as an excuse. And I didn't even menetion the gem that is 'Georgie & Her Rival'
5 stars
Am I mistaken, or did Q magazine give MLAR 5 starts upon its original release. Almost certain I have that right. I remember because shortly afterwards everybody started to give it a right shoeing and I had bought it on the strength of that great review. A bit like the first Tin Machine record in that it got a great Q review (4 stars) on release. "Return to form!", Q exclaimed, seconds before they started calling it the biggest calamity of Bowie's career.
Anyway, MLAR was the first Costello record I bought and I've always really liked it. It's not all to my tastes but 'How to be Dumb" & Couldn't call it Unexpected No. 4" are both among the best he's done, imho.
Funny you should mention the reissues. I tried buying a reissued copy a few years ago but PLAY mistakenly sent me the original version. I wrote to them to ask for the correct one but, again, they sent the original one. I gave up when they sent me the fifth copy of the vanilla album. I like to think someone in PLAY was having a little fun at my expense. I still have them somewhere. I was going to drop them in to a charity shop but, well, they seemed to have an ample supply already!
*Digs in loft for Q Mag*
Yes Matt Snow gave it 5 stars
Sadly the excellent 2 CD reissues (pretty much perfect, can we stop now please?) have been deleted to make way for vanilla editions again.
I dig the lot apart from the CCIU no.2 interlude that slides into Playboy For a Man. Snip those two and it would be perfick but even with em its darn close
those reviews
I'm inclined to agree with some of those less than enthusiastic reviews. There are some really good songs, but there are also moments when everything gets far too fussy to make for a good listen. There is, IMO, some lyrical clumsiness on show. 'Smart' doesn't always scan.
I played it again recently and found myself skipping through several tracks. 'Hurray down doomsday' -for instance- is just not very good.
Oh I quite likly that main riff
but I can understand why it could be annoying.
Lyrical clumsiness eh? Go on then, I'll bite.
clumsy
I hope we're not going to get into a discussion on our respective definitions of 'clumsy' ;)
I think there are loads of really inelegant lyrics on this album that simply don't 'sing' well.
"The rabid rebels dogs ransack the shampoo shop" would be an example, as would "the sun will struggle up, the world will still keep turning" from the same song. I also don't like "a handshaking double talking procession of the mighty" and -from 'Hurry Down Doomsday'- I have no fucking clue what this means:
"Anyday now a giant insect mutation
will swoop down and devour the white man's burden
starting out with all of the sensitive ones
better make like a fly if you don't want to die
look out, there goes Gordon"
I think Elvis has written some brilliant lyrics and MLAR still has flashes of real quality. But it's not in the same league as his best work.
Apparently...
Gordon is a reference to Sting. That doesn't make it much more decipherable though.
I think its a 'mutate or die in the music business' thing
'you better make like a fly' is a reference to U2 and their recent rebirth as arch post modernists with Bono as The Fly. If you're not built of sterner stuff then the machine will eat you up.
Maybe not though
Mighty... Came out about 6 months before Achtung Baby.
Yeah but Elvis bought oen of those bootlegs
of the Achtung sessions and errr
Ok I made it up
Althou its clear what this ia about
"planting a trashy paperback book for accidental purchase containing all the secrets of life and other useless things."
Oliver's Side Of Summer
Off the back of this thread, I've revisited MLTR tonight for the first time in years. An album I loved at the time, BTW.
The single, The Other Side Of Summer was a definitely a belated stab at recreating 'the hit', right down to the hammering Abba piano, wasn't it?
Wow! So Like Candy, though. Still as gorgeous as I remember. I now need to dig out Flowers In The Dirt, to round off tonight.
Pin ups
1973 got slated by every music critic on earth, but I loved it,and still love it to this day. Mind you, I hadn't heard any of the originals, me being only 15 at the time. So I went back and dutifully listened to the original tracks. They were shite. Bowie nailed it.
well chabsy...
each to his own and all that but for mine (and I, too, liked Pin - Ups) his take of "Friday on My Mind" doesn't get within a bull's roar of the original.
On the OP topic: Exile on Main Street was pretty much dimissed by every one at the time of it's release only to be held up as the exemplar of Stonesyness just a few years later.
They were right - Exile is a lousy album
I've heard a lot of RS in my time and still cannot find space in my life for more than a couple of 'Exile' tracks - to me it's a lazy, muddy, tuneless mess. I will never the get the 'greatest Stones album' propaganda, there are at least a half dozen far superior RS discs:
Let it Bleed
Sticky Fingers
Out of our Heads/December's Children (US)
Goats Heads Soup
Some Girls
Beggars Banquet
Hell, even Black and Blue, Satanic Majesty and IORR are more fun to listen to than Exile.
That song "Broken" isn't too special
At least I don't think it is.
The rest of MLAR is packed with gems, though.
I love it when the great man does "Couldn't Call it Unexpected #4" live without a microphone. Just the human voice unamplified. Magic.
One of my favorites
Back to back with its predecessor "Spike" I think the two albums together represent the rebirth (or at least part two) of EC's career. Fantastic stuff, both of them, and has not been matched since.
Spike..
I love that album. He did a great solo tour to plug it. And a great show on BBC 2 (nearly took the head right off the interviewer - Tracy Impossible Bird I think?).
Everything
You Ever Wanted To Know About Spike
Yeah just picked it up off a torrent site. Its where the off posted clip of 'Tramp The Dirt Down' comes from
Teenage Fanclub Thirteen
They were riding high, critics darlings even some comercial success. Then out came Thirteen and it got a right old kicking, they fell from the pedestal and their career, at least commercially never recovered. I had a Virgin Encyclopedia of Pop Music that gave it just one star a few years later a score reserved only for the worst albums ever made. Come on, it's no classic, certainly not great, but that bad? Any album with Norman 3, Radio, Fear of Flying, Song to the Cynic and the mighty Gene Clark has got to be at the very least, possibly even very good. Life is unfair.
The Stone Roses
NME gave it a 6 and a bit of a kicking on its initial release.
Once it was clear the Roses were very much the zeitgeist, NME re-reviewed it 3 months down the line and gave it a 9.
New Labour before New Labour!
And Q magazine...
...didn't even review it when it was released! Staff then:
Editor - Mark Ellen
Editorial Director - David Hepworth
Probably explains why they are so sniffy about it even now :-)
They did manage a **** to When The World Knows Your Name by Deacon Blue and ***** to Spike by Elvis Costello around the same time but they couldn't find space for 100 words on The Stone Roses.
Listening to it again
awhile back MLAR left me a bit cold, perhaps I don't indentify with the spite contained therein anymore. If, as the great man says, the beard was intended to 'piss people off' I guess the LP's wild stylistic lurches and some of the more charmless lyrics were too.
Georgie and Her Rival is a great song badly arranged and recorded. Playboy To A Man is a poor retread of Spike's Pads, Paws and Claws, Hurry Down Doomsday similarly revisits Tokyo Storm Warning to little effect. How To Be Dumb is very gloriously Dylanesque and, as quoted by the OP, contains one of rock's best uses of the word 'fucker'. Invasion Hit Parade and so Like Candy are both overly heavy and ploddy. Broken is a bit of an indulgence. After The Fall is pure Leonard Cohen - and, like a lot of the LP, palpably sad and bitter.
In all, the LP seems like 'Spike: The Sequel' but without the charm. I remember at the time it losing a lot of peoples' patience, a friend threw it out after a few weeks saying 'I'm not sure why I ever liked him!'.
...but, Elvis is very headstrong, and you just have to leave him to find his own way really.
The Juliet Letters is altogether much more fun.
The Juliet Letters
I find really dry and constrictive on record with a lot of the wearmth and humour taken out, The live performances are much more a reflection of that music for me
Juliet Letters/Mighty like a Rose
Juliet Letters is the only Costello album I cannot listen to. I even struggled with the live performance to be honest.
Mighty like a Rose contains 3 songs that I would probably put in my EC top 20 namely So like Candy, Couldn't call it unexpected and After the fall. The latter of these might even go in my top 5 - beautiful song and very mysterious.
I always wondered if 'the fall' referred to the autumn as in 'since she cameback to him after the Autumn' or fall as in some kind of nervous breakdown - she came back to him when she got better.
I think the couplet
"She lies to his right and she carelessly recites
All of her brand new appetites"
points towards a lady having had an affair and learning some new moves etc
Still thats the fun of songs when you start picking em apart