The unlikely cocktail suggested by the title of this, Elvis Costello's twelfth album since he came screaming out riding on the back of the late 70s punk and new wave movements, acts as an evil twin to that old cliche "hearts and flowers". On this album Costello looks at love and life through dark-coloured glasses, not to block out the sun so much as to hide his angry tears.
Musically it marks a return to form. Gone is the overslick synth-pop sound found on his previous two albums with The Attractions; gone too are the country-blues strains of King Of America, Costello's previous 1986 release. Instead we get perhaps the punkiest album in Costello's whole back-catalogue, but tempered with a mature cynicism. This is Elvis, gaunt stride intact, rocking harder and nastier than ever, twisting each bitter phrase like he's savouring garlic before he inevitably spits it out. And by his side, The Attractions, possibly the most durable and adaptable of all the bands to come out of the new wave boom, matching Costello's trademark spite and venom with passionate, aggressive playing. If in the past casual listeners could retreat from the playful but vicious wordplay to the pop sheen of The Attractions' arrangements, this time out there is no such respite. The hooks are dirtier; the pop less comfortable. The lead-off track is called "Uncomplicated", a title which sums up the attitude apparent in the recording.
The song itself is a perfect opener, a big dumb beat and tremolo guitar being features of what Costello describes as "my latest failed attempt to write a song based on one chord". The next two songs continue in that blasting rock'n'roll vein - "I Hope You're Happy Now" sounds like it could have stepped right off 1978's seminal This Year's Model, while "Tokyo Storm Warning" shows just how far Costello's writing has come since then. The first of two six-minute-plus epics, it's a stomping, screaming scenario conjuring up images of Brazil, Blade Runner and Daimaru. It conjures up a world populated with "Disney abattoirs", "KKK conventions" and "Japanese God-Jesus robots", a world of sci-fi that becomes even more terrifying when you realise that he's talking about the present. The music sounds something like what might happen if Iggy Pop arranged the Sesame Street theme, all thumping beats and bluesy organ.
It's not until track five that the album finally quietens, and the horror implied by the album title crystallises. "I Want You" is not only the longest song Costello's ever released, it is also one of the best, and almost certainly the most disturbing. The mantra-like repetition of the title phrase underlines the cries of a lover cheated. "Did you call his name out as he held you down? / I want you / Oh no my darling, not with that clown / I want you". All the while, Costello's vocals control the heat under the band - now simmering, now bubbling, now boiling, before suddenly plunging back into stark iciness. So sparse is the end of the track that during mix-down, the instrumental tracks were completely faded out; all that remains is the shadowy sounds of the band bleeding onto the vocal mike. (Just one piece of information gleaned from the extensive liner notes by Costello himself which accompany this reissue.)
Over on what was Side 2 in the old money, the music is a little more upbeat, but the lyrical concerns are similar. The album continues to be fuelled by blood and chocolate -the cynic and romantic in Costello's make-up unable to reconcile the fact that they share the same personality. So on "Crimes of Paris", the song's protagonist finds that "in the tiny torn-up pieces of his mind he's irresistible too": a puffed-up ego actually at the mercy of the woman he thought he was using.
"Poor Napoleon" continues in the Parisian vein, with Steve Nieve's keyboard fills sometimes recalling cheesy accordions, sometimes distant thunder. "I can't sleep on this bed anymore, it burns my skin I You can take the truthful things you've said to me and put them on the head of a pin" could be the same character as in "I Want You", but here more sorrowful. Elvis' wife, former Pogue Cait O'Riordan, is credited as "the voice of pity".
"Battered Old Bird" is quiet and reflective at first, as Costello recounts tales of the block of flats in which he lived as a child. One by one characters are introduced from the various rooms, in a blend of pathos and slapstick narrative, as the gentle balladry is gradually replaced by a more frantic, overbearing vocal. The song climaxes with a swirling Beatlesque backwards section, linking two separate takes together a la "Strawberry Fields Forever", perhaps a subtle salute to Lennon's childhood reminiscences.
As with all the recent Costello reissues, the disc concludes with a selection of bonus tracks culled from singles, sound tracks, outtakes and the like. Blood and Chocolate's bonuses are certainly a lift from the gloom of the majority of the album proper, beginning with EC's collaboration with Jimmy Cliff on "Seven Day Weekend". The single version of "Blue Chair" is also here, highlighting a soulful Staxy sound, though I prefer the slower, more reflective version found in the main part of the album. The reissue concludes with two tracks that must count among Costello's oddest, even bearing in mind his latter-day penchant for eclecticism. They're both spaghetti western themes recorded with his father, Ross McManus, on trumpet and actor Sy Richardson narrating tongue-in-cheek tales of the town of Big Nothing. Costello's proficient Spanish guitar may also surprise those who thought his guitar style was limited to the scratchy rhythm tracks we so often hear on his albums.
It wasn't until 1994 that The Artist Formerly Known as Declan Aloysius Patrick McManus attacked another straight rock record, although to call Blood and Chocolate straight rock seems to be doing it an injustice. On this record you can hear a mature band tensing up, on the verge of exploding (which they did straight after the subsequent tour) and taking it out on their instruments. As Costello himself explains, it's "a pissed-off thirty-two year old's version of This Year's Model".
"Uncomplicated", indeed. But totally compelling.