Elvis Costello - Hey Clockface - 2020
I stopped this Costello project with Secret, Profane and Sugarcane.
Even though National Ransome had a cover that screamed, "Allen, I think you will like this!" and there were accolades for the follow ups, I just never bothered.
Here we have another entry and, because I am mired in the 80s I've also taken it upon myself to listen to music released by artists from that era but, 40+ years after they first made news.
So, here we are with Hey Clockface. An album that starts off determined to say it's here to challenge you and all you know about Elvis. Moody, ominous and filled with treachery, the opening track "Revolution #49" is a spoken word piece, we should know...this isn't the My Aim is True Elvis. I'm not even sure it's the Sugarcane Elvis. It's something else entirely. "No Flag" is a pounder that defies pigeonholing. Elvis isn't interested in playing to the radio crowd. That track is only going to get played by the most adventurous of DJs.
By the time we get near the end, which is signalled by the other spoken word "Radio is Everything", I found myself angrier and angrier. Because the reviews of this thing are such that it should be a masterpiece not a mastur....
I don't cotton to Elvis' more meandering balladeering. I find him unctuous and boring when he does that so, when the record finally picks up on the title track I was severely let down that it's just another in a long like of Costello as Honky Tonker pieces. Like he took that review that called him the "new Cole Porter" so seriously, he decided to write stuff as a peer of Cole's instead of being his own man.
Look, I didn't care for Painted From Memory or North or any of the softer Costello offerings. This one didn't impress any more than those.
C+
A Side: No Flag
Down Side: Too Many to Mention
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