Albums by this artist

One of the all-time great divorce records, 1986's Blood And Chocolate saw Elvis Costello throwing a big, fat, juicy T-bone to his hardcore fans -- after the orchestral Imperial Bedroom, hyper-produced pop flops Goodbye Cruel World and Punch The Clock, and the pleasant but sedate folky King Of America, B&C is a vicious, full-throttle Attractions record, recorded mostly live in the studio and in one case through a single microphone.

It's a bitter trip, but one that doesn't become insufferable because Costello gets away from the breakup of his own marriage to find that loneliness is all around. It's been following him from his youth ("Battered Old Bird"), has conquered the globe ("Tokyo Storm Warning"), and will only get worse in the future ("Next Time Round").

Somehow, Costello manages to make this all listenable. Since the tunes are less melodic than the earlier '80s stuff -- the first three songs hardly have three chords between them -- the rhythm section is put into the spotlight for the first time since the '78 classic This Year's Model. And my goodness, do they deliver. Bruce Thomas's bass line on "I Hope You're Happy Now" is nothing short of stunning, whipping about the neck with hellbent precision and pushing this one up into the very highest echelon of Elvis songs.

Costello claims to have written most of these songs sitting at his kitchen counter and pounding on the table, and it shows. The "big stupid" beat of "Uncomplicated" starts everything out with dirty Telecaster strumming louder than all of King Of America played at once. The guitar sound on this song is the #1 reason why I traded in my Strat for a Tele last year. "Tokyo Storm Warning," with its crazy, Bo Diddley-appropriated beat and psychedelic George Harrison guitar breaks, is a six-minute nightmare tour of Costello's uniquely British vision of dystopia. The breathless, hoarse way in which Elvis spits out the lyrics ("they say the gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners / they're so tired of shooting protest singers that they hardly mention us") is just as important as the words themselves. Extraordinary.

Side two doesn't keep up the relentless pace of its predecessor, nor should it. Elvis realizes that breakups work in stages, and Blood And Chocolate's flipside is full of more considered work like "Blue Chair" and "Crimes Of Paris" that slows down the tempos without losing any of the intensity. "Next Time Round" finishes off the record by guaranteeing it's all going to start over again real soon. How uplifting. He's right, of course. But every time you start the cycle over again, you can approach Blood And Chocolate anew. Every cloud does have its silver lining. In Elvis's world, the silver lining will probably end up giving you lead poisoning.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.