4 keepers (original album)
keeper avg .266
Costello's ambitious seventh album explores various popular music styles to varying degrees of success depending on one's preferences. The stronger album side one starts with "Beyond Belief"***** which gradually builds from a simmer to a boil through a few twists without changing its propulsive tempo. "Tears Before Bedtime" quirky, witty "Everybody knows I've been so wrong, That's the problem and here's the hook", and very similar to Squeeze. The darker "Shabby Doll"**** is one of the few seemingly guitar-based songs on the album, but it's still augmented by some ballsy bass and insistent piano accents, while the (bafflingly unsuccessful) single "Man Out Of Time"***** is a lush, instantly memorable piano ballad similar to "Accidents Will Happen" from Armed Forces. The side is filled out by Parisian tango "The Long Honeymoon", torch song "Almost Blue", and the Sgt. Pepper influenced "And In Every Home."
Side two includes the Beatles's "Getting Better"-like "The Loved Ones" and the dramatic "Human Hands"****; on "Little Savage" (like "Busy Bodies" from Armed Forces) the end of each crooned chorus "You do something very special to Mister Average, now the lamb lies with the lion, he's just a little savage" is accented by a cool reverberating vocal effect. Filled out by more experiments, a country waltz ballad ("Kid About It"), another torch song ("Boy With A Problem"), fussy orchestral pop ("Pidgin English" and "You Little Fool") side two seems to peter out by the stronger closing piano ballad "Town Cryer."
The bonus tracks included by Rykodisk include several covers and several demos, the best being the surprisingly unreleased "The Stamping Ground"****, a gleeful waltz-time bar sing-along poking fun at a female bar fly.
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