ELVIS COSTELLO
When I Was Cruel
(Island)
Elvis Costello has always been a special breed of songwriter. Never content in his 25-year-career to simply gaze at his navel and report on the findings, the erstwhile Declan MacManus has always penned tunes about people, places and situations outside himself. That's not to say he doesn't write about things he personally cares about—one listen to songs like "Less Than Zero" (about the pop culture appeal of fascism), "Tramp the Dirt Down" (regarding the reign of Margaret Thatcher) or "Little Palaces" (about child abuse) proves that he can be as passionate as anyone. But often writers like Costello can be guilty of dispassionate hubris, standing so far outside a given subject that the resultant coverage comes off cold and unfeeling. Sometimes an artist keeps his or her personal feelings so far away from the creation that his or her work, no matter how entertaining or even artful, fails to stir any emotions in the listener.(We're talking to you, Paul Simon. You too, Sting.)

Costello has been guilty of this as well, especially in the last decade. He spent the 90s as a determined eclectician, striving to keep his muse titillated (and, not coincidentally, prove his worth without his longtime critically worshipped backup group the Attractions) with a series of musical experiments and often startlingly diverse albums. But for every rousing success (the Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted From Memory, the style-hopping Spike), there was a imperturbable failure (The Juliet Letters, a turgid collaboration with classical combo the Brodsky Quartet, All This Useless Beauty, a half-hearted collection of songs originally written by Costello for other artists). His latest album When I Was Cruel is a return to the eclectic nature of Spike, and fortunately it falls much closer to the "success" end of the spectrum than to the point marked "failure."

That said, a few cuts on Cruel don't particularly work. "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)" rocks hard but seems to be a joke that only its writer is in on. "Radio Silence" takes some nice imagery and drowns it in amelodic lushness, while "Spooky Girlfriend" never lives up to its lurid title. The two-part epic "Dust 2..." and "...Dust," "Episode of Blonde" and "Alibi" demonstrate Costello's need for a good editor, as they nearly choke on the streams of verbiage flowing from the writer's pen. This is especially frustrating for the passionately performed "Alibi," which if half the length would be one of the record's best tracks.

Outside of those cuts, though, When I Was Cruel displays Costello working in top form. The opening track "45" puts a sharp power pop hook to a clever, compassionate meditation that somehow manages to compare the end of World War II to the rise of seven-inch singles. "Soul For Hire" finds a lawyer examining his conscience over a Tom Waits-like junk rhythm track. "Dissolve" and "Daddy Can I Turn This?" may be somewhat lyrically obtuse, but they both pound harder than anything Costello has ever recorded, steamrollering over any objections in a rush of rock & roll power. Perhaps still feeling the after-effects of working with Bacharach, Costello sings of love's redemption in two wildly divergent songs: "15 Petals," which lovingly pays tribute to years of marriage over an urgent, noir-jazz arrangement barely held together by a horn section, and "My Little Blue Window," which invites a lover to smash through his defenses with a melody that ranks as one of his loveliest. The emotionally crooned "Tart" takes a pessimist to task with what can only be called caustic compassion: "Is it something you crave/Cos you say you only feel bitterness/Would it kill you to show us a little sweetness?" Best of all is "When I Was Cruel No. 2," a witty recollection that manages to take the piss out of high society, poke fun at the critics who made Costello their darling from day one and put to rest his own illustrious past, all of it carefully threaded through a melody built around a sample from the Latin American tune "Un Bacio È Troppo Poco." It's a tour de force destined to be included on any list of Costello's greatest tracks.

Unlike any of Costello's previous records, When I Was Cruel is built from the rhythm patterns up, with melodies composed to fit the beat. This approach gives the record an insistent pulse that automatically makes it stand out from the rest of his catalog; it also makes the songs difficult to resist. With a batch of his strongest melodies in years and quite possibly his finest singing ever on record (those crooning lessons are paying off at last), When I Was Cruel is easily the first great Costello record of the new millennium. Let's hope he can keep this creative upswing moving consistently higher. Michael Toland [buy it]

For fans of: Los Lobos' Kiko, Billy Bragg, Joe Henry