Armed Forces - Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1979)


Armed Forces, Elvis Costello and the Attractions second album (and Elvis' third)  was apparently largely recorded in ABBA's RAK studios in Sweden, as Elvis wanted to get that same icy sound of the human soul in isolation that ABBA captured so well.

Armed Forces contains 12 stellar New Wave pop songs dominated by Steve Nieve's synth, piano and keyboard textures. What's interesting is how Elvis and the band have taken these batch of incredible songs and really played with them structurewise: they are, at base, simply pop/rock songs, but some of them, like the odd arty "Green Shirt" are  are couched in cold, non-traditional arrangements that one might think would work against a pop song -- and yet, here it serves to deepen and enhance it, making each song a separate song of expansion. The lyrics explore Elvis' usual themes of paranoia and isolation, both personal and political, resentment and his familiar mean spirit is just as apparent as ever. 

Tuneful and well-sung, a New Wave  classic from 1979 perhaps surpassed only by the Holy London Calling.

5/5



The original UK and US albums differed: the US album did not feature "Moods For Moderns" (the record company felt it was "too English") and substituted a live-in-the-studio cover of Nick Lowe's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding", which became a big MTV hit for Elvis, and maybe his most well-known songin the States -- ironically since he didn't even write it.

I have the 1994 Rykodisc/Demon reissue which has the original 12 tracks, plus "What's So Funny"...and many many other tracks: non-album B-sides, singles, compilation songs and the like. It's a fantastic package,though apparently the polarities are reversed or whatever, that doesn't bother me.

There are laster "deluxe" issues that have been released, but they are generally brickwalled. However, there's a 2020, or maybe 2019 reissue on vinyl that sounds great: unfortunately, it's not availalbe on CD and most digital lossless versions just feature an earlier brickwalled master. Lossy versions (I.e., iTunes) do not though, confusingly. I'm happy with my The digital super deluxe version is worth getting for me because it has a huge amount of live material on it, including one long concert recorded at Hollywood High, bu totherwise I am super-satisfied iwth the Rykodisc/Demon issue.


Spotify Link: 

https://open.spotify.com/album/5w3q6GZbw0gsAtvl1c0rmu?si=1ha3mvlrQOmLtCUTVvoRnA



Coming Up:


A.M. Wilco

A.T.O.M. - Carbon Silicon

ABBA - ABBA 

ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits

Abbey Road - The Beatles

Achtung, Baby! U2

Actually - Pet Shop Boys

Adult/Child- The Beach Boys

Aerosmith's Greatest Hits

After The Gold Rush - Neil Young

Afterglow - Crowded House

Aftermath (UK Version) - The Rolling Stones

Against The Odds: 1974-1982 Blondie (three disc version)

Aimee Mann Live at St. Ann's Warehouse

Aiming For Your Head - Betchadupa

The Album -- ABBA

The Album That Never Was - The Kinks

All Four One - The Motels

All Over the Place - The Bangles

All Summer Long -- The Beach Boys

All the Great Hits -- Diana Ross

All Things Must Pass -- George Harrison

All This Useless Beauty -- Elvis Costello & the Attractions

All-Time Greatest Hits - Neil Diamond

Alluvium -- Eddie Rayner

Almost Blue -- Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Almost Summer - Celebration

Alpha Mike Foxtrot -- Wilco*

The Alphabetchadupa - Betchadupa

Altitude - ALT

American Idiot Green Day*

American Prayer -- The Doors

Amnesiac Radiohead*

And I Feel Fine...The Best of the IRS years (1982-1987) - R.E.M.

Animals - Pink Floyd

Anodyne - Uncle Tupelo

Another Life - Another Life

Another Music in Another Kitchen: The Buzzcocks

Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan

Anthology: Diana Ross & The Supremes

Anthology: Smokey Robinson & The Beatles

Anthology 1: The Beatles

Anthology 2: The Beatles

Anthology 3 The Beatles

Anthology: North South, East West - Tim Finn

Apple Venus: Volume One -- XTC

Apollo 18 - They Might Be Giants

The ArchAndroid: Janelle Monae

Are the Village Green Preservation Society -- The Kinks

Are Well-Respected Men - The Kinks

Armed Forces -Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Around the World in a Day - Prince

Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - The Kinks

At My Piano - Brian Wilson

Autoamerican - Blondie

Automatic for the People - R.E.M.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Become What You are - The Juliana Hatfield Three (1993)

Image
  Despite the fact that  Become What You Are   reminds me of a rather dreary time in my life -- the year and a half or so when I came back to Springfield Missouri after college to live -- I think this is one of my favorite albums of 1993 -- and 1993 was a really good year for my taste in music.  Juliana Hatfield has a way of telling stories and fleshing out ver complex characters and defining complex emotions in amazingly simple terms, with a few lyrics as possible -- she's sort of, like, the Hemmingway of singer/songwriters. And that's a compliment. But to be clear, this music is not one woman alone with an acoustic guitar; this is a real rock band and Juliana Hatfield herself is quite a formidable hard rock guitarist. This is kind of in the grunge era; I wouldn't call it grunge, but it's from  the brief period of time when singer songwriters could rock in this way that was somewhere between The Stooges, Kiss, and Big Star. See also some of Aimee Mann's cu...
Read more

Arrival - ABBA (1976)

Image
  Arrival was Abba's fourth album, which was long labored over, to good results: it was a huge seller, even going gold in the stubbornly resistant American market, thanks to the giganto-hit "Dancing Queen", still in it's one of the most perfectly written pop songs of all time. The immortal image of the 17 year old girl awash in the first innocent glow of her full physical and sexual power dancing alone under the blue lights strikes tears in my eyes every single time I hear it. I'ts so perfect. .. Like their previous self-titled album  Arrival  runs through a lot of styles and moods, but the the album overall comes off as even more adult and overtly sexual: while the first two songs celebrate innocent girlhood: (girlish fantasies of kissing teacher, the innocent abandon of the 70s teen disco,) the themes seem to progress from innocence to materialistic and sexual cynicism. But the album never breaks a sweat doing this: it all still goes down like ice-cream. The de...
Read more

Beggar's Banquet - Rolling Stones (1968)

Image
Beggar's Banquet was The Rolling Stones' first post-psychedelic album, in which they went back to their roots as a blues rock band, a place which they have decided never to leave again, perhaps due to the disastrous reception of Their Satanic Majesties Request. A pity, in my opinion, but this is not the place to go into it. It's also probably the last great gasp of original guitarist/multi-instrumentalist colorist Brian Jones, although he would play on a few songs on the next album, he was rapidly descending in a tragic downward spiral.  Personally I prefer the rissks the 1965-1967 era Stones took to the Blues Rock phase (though with the addition of Mick Taylor they definitely recorded a pair of their finest albums) and I find the relentless roots rock of  Beggar's Banquet to be a tad bit disappointing. Like, where are the harpsichords, horns, dulcimers and sitars of yesteryear?  Having said that, there are definitely no bad songs here: no ten minute long jams or lame M...
Read more