release date: Jun. 18, 1984
format: digital (2004 2 cd remaster)
[album rate: 3 / 5] [2,88]
producer: Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley
label: Rhino Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "The Only Flame in Town" - 2. "Home Truth" - 3. "Room With No Number" - 6. "Love Field" - 12. "The Deportees Club"
9th studio album released as Elvis Costello & The Attractions following 10 months after Punch the Clock (1983) is like the predecessor produced by the duo Langer / Winstanley. The end result is not as good since Costello apparently wanted to pursue a stronger folk rock sound but the management and the producer-duo sat out for a new pop-styled mix, which ended up with a compromise: songs like "I Wanna Be Loved" [track #7] and "The Only Flame in Town" were pure Langer-Winstanley productions, whereas other songs were made according to Costello's wishes.
The 2004 2cd remaster on Rhino comes with a bonus disc containing 26 additional tracks consisting of demo takes, alternate versions, outtakes, other takes and live recordings - as a collector's item, mostly.
The album is mainstream pop / rock-founded in sheer sophisti-pop-arrangements with bits of pop soul that makes it sound like a close relative to the '83 album - also with the same producer-duo.
To me, it was like witnessing the end of a great comet-career with two lesser albums in a row, and with this like the outtakes to the '83-album being clearly the weakest. Some compositions even sound as well-written songs but with strong use of harmony-vocals, 80s synths and an abundance of shakers and bleeps and bloops songs are turned into a generic... mish-mash.
The album spawned three singles: track #13 "Peace in Our Time", track #7 "I Wanna Be Loved", and track #1 "The Only Flame in Town" peaking at number #48, number #25, and #71 respectively on the UK singles chart list.
Costello had been super-productive from the late 70s and into the early '80s but his artistic level had begun to crumble, or so it appears. For a '95 reissue in the liner notes, Costello even wrote: "Congratulations! You've just purchased our worst album." And that's pretty much how it's widely considered.
In retrospect it doesn't really shine much, and looking at Costello's long-lasting career this very album seems like an absolute wrong turn down a dead-end street without a clear direction, which he luckily understood quite soon. The album may suffer from the fact that Costello and The Attractions experienced inner conflicts, which apparently had Costello suggest it was to be his last with the backing band [also hinted at in the title] and that he found himself in the midst of a divorce from his first wife Mary as well as in a romantic restart of his relationship with (American) Bebe Buell. In this respect, many of the songs deal with starting and ending relationships.
Already as the album was in the making, Costello had made plans of solo concerts in the US without his normal backing band, and these concerts gave him the freedom he needed.
Given various ideas of musical direction, inner conflicts between band members, the album is an incoherent whole, and it stands out as a strong contender to Costello's biggest miss. Overall, it's an album that cannot be recommended.
[ allmusic.com, Mojo, Blender, Rolling Stone 2 / 5, Uncut, Q Magazine 4 / 5 stars ]
