Elvis Costello & the Attractions: Goodbye Cruel World (Columbia)
Fred Schruers, Musician, August 1984
BEFORE YOU sink into Elvis Costello's latest, brilliant slough of despond, make sure you keep your copy of the lyrics (printed on the album sleeve). Without such help, Elvis' mumbles, lisps, slides and vocal serrations will be buried. With it, Goodbye Cruel World becomes a coherent if dense assemblage of global and sexual politics. Still, if this album were a few degrees more "mature," it would be inaccessible.
Total word count of piece: 555
