Albums by this artist

It is said that Shakespeare used more than 17,000 words over the course of his 37 plays, 154 sonnets and assorted verse. Incredibly, Elvis Costello manages to employ a comparable number in just one album: Imperial Bedroom. Though it’s unfair to characterize this record as wordy, it is safe to call it thick. Not thick as in dumb, or thick as in fog, but thick as in thicket. Dense, rich, plentiful. That’s Imperial Bedroom.

Indeed, the listener is almost run over with words and music. Having recently learned to live without breathing, Costello spits out the 231 words of opening song “Beyond Belief” in under two minutes (setting a record that would later be broken by John Moschitta, spokesman for MicroMachines). Costello pumps these words out – releasing a zoo of smart metaphors, plays, puns and eloquent turns of phrase – and unlike the Bard, he delivers them to carefully composed music, arranged, orchestrated and produced to near pop perfection. By virtue of having at once some of his best lyrics and best tunes, Imperial Bedroom represents the climax of Elvis Costello’s career. Though he would go on to release some good albums, this is his last great one. Here Costello is at his most confident, no longer young and angry, but experienced and energetic, exploring his abilities as a lyricist and songwriter in the best of ways.

Costello and the Attractions play new instruments, bring in orchestras, and even try out a new producer, marking the first time they’d worked on original material with someone other than Nick Lowe. Here they opt for legendary Abbey Road engineer Geoff Emerick, whose credits include Sgt. Pepper, the Zombies’ Odessey & Oracle, and Wings’ Band on the Run. By choosing to work with Emerick, Costello not only broadened his technical options but also brought a new voice to what would become a very collaborative setting. Emerick gave Costello’s well-developed pop sense a new shine and the producer’s presence seems to have stirred the already bubbling creative juices in the songwriter and his Attractions.

This is all readily apparent from track one on. “Beyond Belief” delivers a sound that’s not new for Costello alone, but for all of pop music. The drums and bass set the song’s dark, apprehensive tone before Costello’s voice begins running up and down the scale. The tune builds like a tornado, swirling into a vortex of organ and impassioned disbelief. Two songs later, “Shabby Doll” opens with a foreboding twelve-string Gibson plugged into a Hammond Leslie speaker. This quickly unfolds into a pop-up book of a song that finds the Attractions funking out in a heretofore-unheard fashion. “She’s so sure she’s self-possessed,” Elvis sings, “then again, she’s half-undressed.” The blown bass pumps, the piano rattles, and ghostly backing vocals echo, “she’s just a shabby doll, shabby doll.”

At the start of Side B, we’re treated to more of the same. The opening songs “Loved Ones” and “Human Hands” pair the singer’s playful “verbal gymnastics” with the bouncing ball of the band. The two meld to faultlessly form what might be considered the most enjoyable five minutes of Elvis Costello’s recorded work, a veritable vial of Brit-pop crack rock. “Loved Ones” grabs the listener immediately with its uptempo guitar strums and holds them captive to the final “P.P.S.I.L.O.V.E.Y.O.U.” outro. The song is then one-upped by “Human Hands,” with its heartfelt chorus and outstanding closing verse, where we get a perfectly constructed rhythm line as well as a good dose of Costello’s patented wit. “Are you living in this world,” he sometimes wonders, “saying you’ve seen too much and saying you’ve seen it all before.”

Beyond this pop excellence, the album also shows Costello further exploring his fascination with the slow ballad. He’d written and recorded many such tunes before, but he’d never challenged his voice so extensively. On “Almost Blue” he croons low in his register, holding notes across several beats, before letting it float upward for the bridge. With other songs, he tackles intricate and meandering melodies, bringing unexpected texture to his delivery of certain lines and words – the way he sings “it’s the last thing I want to do,” in “Boy With A Problem” or how he delivers the “kid” of “Kid About It” with such a breathy air. The nuanced melisma of the opening line of “Town Cryer” somehow expands “cryer” into a five-syllable word. This exploration of delivery brings forward a new flavor to his songwriting and sets this album apart from his previous efforts.

Of course, not all of the album’s experimentation is successful. Elvis’ crooning theatrics don’t quite save the accordion-laden schmaltz of “Long Honeymoon,” and Emerick’s influence goes a bit too far on “…And In Every Home,” where a horn and orchestra Beatle tribute nearly turns into a late-era Tears for Fears song. The second side has its pair of bummers as well. “Little Savage” sounds like a Get Happy!! outtake and, despite its clever structure and devastating lyrics, “Boy With A Problem” is a bit too cumbersome. That said, I would listen to all four songs just to be able to listen to “Man Out of Time” or “Beyond Belief” once.

Costello’s lyrics often read like a riddle. The protagonist in “Man Out of Time” is a “tuppeny happeny millionaire,” for whom life is “days of Dutch courage, just three French letters and a German sense of humor.” It’s nearly enough to prompt Ryko to issue an annotated reissue of the reissued reissue of this record. But I rather like the ambiguity of these lines and enjoy the room for interpretation. Aware of the album’s frequent moments of impenetrability, Elvis deputized Squeeze’s Chris Difford to pen the lyric for “Boy With a Problem,” which provides a relievingly straightforward moment of clarity:

I feel like a boy with a problem
I can’t believe what we’ve forgotten
And I even slapped your face and made you cry

Lyrically, you can put many of these songs on the same shelf as Bob Dylan’s “Idiot Wind.” They focus mainly on relationships gone incredibly sour. The characters are past getting along, beyond even not getting along or, in his words, “beyond belief.” They are not speaking to one another, sneaking out at night for drinks. They are abused and they are abusive. In “Tears Before Bedtime,” the singer wonders “how wrong can I be before I’m right?” On “Long Honeymoon,” he tells of a “wife who who’s wondering where her husband could be tonight.” And on “Kid About It,” a woman confesses to her fearful boyfriend, “I waited all my life for just a little death.” Even the song titles set a harsh scene: “You Little Fool,” “Little Savage,” “Town Cryer,” and so on. On “Man Out of Time,” Costello tells us “love is always scalpering or cowering or fawning.” Man, you can’t get much more jaded than that.

Still, this is Elvis Costello. He’s always been on the dark side – his first album featured a couple that traded in their baby for a Chevrolet. Costello doesn’t run on bitterness alone, though. He’s always had a well-sharpened wit and disarming sense of humor. With this album, he takes those tools and aims his guns at the most reverend topic of pop music: love. I sort of envision the “imperial bedroom” as a metaphor for the exalted, lily-white concept of love that’s been built by Billboard-charting pop albums throughout rock history. I’m thinking of the sort of rubbish you hear tuning in the shine of the late night dial right after you’ve been dumped and shake your head. You listen to it, think of your problems, hear the silly lyrics, ponder the disconnect between the two, and then promptly turn the tuner’s knob.

With Imperial Bedroom, Costello has taken on all those songs and very carefully, very neatly, pulled the rug out from underneath their majestic myths. In that sense, his caustic take is cathartic, almost refreshing. This is real love he’s writing about, and consequently, these are great songs, the kind that you can listen to whether you’ve been dumped or not. Songs you can live with and digest over a lifetime, enjoy when you’re in college, re-discover years later after you’ve married, and still find new previously hidden meanings.

On occasion, Elvis can verge on the verbose and at times his wit can wander too far into the darkness of his black humor. He has also, at times, put his need for stylistic exploration ahead of his listeners’ yearning for enjoyable music (e.g. Almost Blue, Juliet Letters). On Imperial Bedroom, however, Elvis Costello strikes the perfect balance between allowing himself the freedom to explore his craft and giving his audience what they crave, and in the process he provides an unobstructed view of human interaction. This is a fulfilling, complex (oh, and thick) piece of pop art that inspires continued examination and enjoyment. It quite nearly earns the “masterpiece” mantle used in its marketing to the masses.

BEN FRENCH | Ben founded NATN in the winter of 1998-1999 with fellow IU alums Troy Carpenter and Jonathan Cohen. During the day time, he's working for Nielsen Business Media, publisher of Billboard. Ben's favorite acts include Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, Sonic Youth, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys.