lazuli777@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> The album turned a lot of his diehards off & was too esoteric for new
> ones.In some ways he's never recovered.
But GCW, KoA, and B&C all had been commercial disappointments too, well
reviewed though the latter two were. SPIKE got a big push from his
then-new label and had a modest hit single driving it in the first few
months, but its strong sales seem an aberration in retrospect. MLAR, by
my recollection, fit in with a general commercial trend that had been
in effect throughout the preceding decade.
Many critics and fans have tried to pin down what it is about MLAR that
marks it as a particularly difficult one. One theory is that it's too
thematically "dark"; I don't agree with this (it is dark, but not
unusually so for him -- were B&C and TRUST rollicking good-time
records?). Another is that some of the music is strange and/or harsh
and dissonant ("Doomsday," "Broken"); but much else is the antithesis
of that ("The Other Side Of Summer," "Georgie And Her Rival," "So Like
Candy," "Sweet Pear"), and again -- B&C, anyone?
I really think that the big stumbling block is something I personally
love about it: that extreme richness and density of sound, with layer
upon sonic layer like deep oils on a canvas. He'd made heavily produced
records before, but his mainstream bids with Langer and Winstanley were
more prefab affairs: the sounds were slick, conventional, and
inevitably wedded to their times. On MLAR, he and his collaborators
(Killen and Froom, wasn't it?) went for something really audacious and
individual, conjuring up all manner of textures that are as vivid as
colors: here strange and desolate ("Broken"), here lush and overripe
("All Grown Up"), here cool and spare ("After The Fall"), here suave
and beautiful ("Sweet Pear"). Even on a straight-ahead rockabilly
throwaway like "Playboy To A Man," they were going to the trouble of
distorting the vocals and overdubbing three pianos; you may like or
hate the song, but the *track* is unlikely to remind you of anything
else. The album is a remarkable piece of work qua sound (it doesn't
sound like other albums made in 1991, or other Elvis Costello albums,
etc.; it just sounds like MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE), and the writing is of
high quality too. But it's a lot for the ear to take in, and if one is
inclined to prefer a simpler, less ornate sound palette -- as, frankly,
not just EC fans but people who listen primarily to rock and pop in
general are -- it's a tough sell.
Todd K
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