Elvis Costello — Spike

In 1989, Elvis Costello released “Spike,” one of the few times I have really anticipated an album, really wanted it the moment it came out. I tend not to get excited about new material until I’ve heard it – it used to be that you got maybe one song, if that, on the radio before the album came out, so you had to reserve your judgment for the actual release. But in this case, I was anxious for this thing to come out, and definitely counted on buying the CD as soon as it was released.

I regarded it immediately as a masterpiece on the level of “King of America.” Time may have taken the polish off some of the subject material in “Spike,” with laments about the changes in Britain showing up across several songs – but the music is still as fresh. There are two collaborations with Paul McCartney that, atypically for the time, seem to be the better for Macca’s participation, including “Veronica,” one of the best songs Costello has ever done. That should have been a massive hit. Another incredible song is “Deep Dark Truthful Mirror.” Despite being played with essentially four different ensembles of musicians in this first post-Attractions album, the sound is pretty cohesive and the album really works. I’d still put it in my top 3 EC albums– this, “King of America,” and “Blood & Chocolate.” I reserve the right to change out any of those at any time, by the way. There are too many good Elvis albums to remain consistent in my top rankings.

The year it came out was also a pivotal year for me, personally. I finished grad school that year, and was lucky enough to find work in my field – but work that required a year of separation, with my wife living in our old town, me in the new one, long enough to see if it would become a permanent position. I had to divide up our stuff, set us up in two new apartments 140 miles apart. We had to buy a new car without being sure of our income, and we crazily also bought a new canoe. The canoe, we still have. I had given up my full-time job the year before when I got a graduate fellowship, but with that over, I spent the summer of ’89 doing temp work (there was a lot of temp typesetting work back then), and when I wasn’t working, I was either moving us or baking bread. I spent the summer immersed particularly in Joe Jackson, but this was absolutely part of the soundtrack, and I always remember that summer when I hear this album, and picture our last days in the two-story apartment in an old Victorian where we had lived so happily for five years.

Since it came out in 1989, I have only ever had it on CD. I wasn’t even sure there was a vinyl release originally – it appears there were several, though they may have mostly been either record club or specialty pressings. So when I wandered into Forever Changes last week, coming off a refreshing vacation that involved no records or record stores whatsoever, and this beautiful Music on Vinyl release of “Spike” that I didn’t even know existed jumped out of the bins, what was I to do? Of course I had to buy it. Of course. Zero regrets, either, it sounds fantastic.