Customer Reviews

Trust (Dig) (Spkg)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

well let me just start by sayin i love elvis so this review is one sided. this is his trust album it's not his best in my opinion but i still think its good. i got a copy of this album on vinyl before i got the CD and i enjoyed it enough to buy the CD. with tracks like "Clubland", "New Lace Sleeves", "From A Whisper To A Scream" and my favorite off the album "Shot With His Own Gun" this album is worth the 10 bucks. the rest of the tracks are good to the range from a country sound on "Different Finger" to a rockabilly sound on "Luxembourg" and all the classic elvis sound that i love. over all its a good album. if you like elvis add this one to your collection.

"Trust" broke form with earlier Elvis Costello albums in a major way. For the first time, Elvis shifted focus from the brute force of his music to presenting himself more as a vocalist. Where he would often just bellow the songs out (think "Goon Squad" or most of "Get Happy!!"), on "Trust" he began to explore his range. A fair amount of this might have to do with the liner notes continual references to EC's increased drinking problems, but probably more to his budding relationship with Chris Difford of Squeeze. That friendship led to one of the album's highlights when Difford's bandmate Glenn Tillbrook joined EC on "From A Whisper To A Scream." (Squeeze got the favor returned when Elvis co-produced "East Side Story" and added his voice to the classic "Tempted.")

Elvis was also in the middle of something of a writer's draught, which meant that he polished up a few older tunes from his pre-Aim days, and left a couple of songs sounding less than stellar. "You'll Never Be A Man," "Luxembourg" and "Big Sister's Clothes" were the first times I'd ever felt that the songs on an Elvis album were filler (hence the 4 star rating). Not like it mattered, because along with "New Lace Sleeves" and "From A Whisper to a Scream," there was the magnificent "Shot With His Own Gun," a stunning piano ballad. That particular song upped the ante for Elvis the writer, as well as being perfectly realized as a vocalist. (It could also be viewed as a precursor to "Imperial Bedroom's" "The Long Honeymoon" and "Almost Blue.")

Like many of Elvis' albums, "Trust" has aged delightfully. While many may have dismissed it upon release as EC mellowing out, it was actually the maturation point where Elvis the "Angry Young Man" became the classic tunesmith that would carry into the soon to come "Imperial Bedroom."

"Trust" broke form with earlier Elvis Costello albums in a major way. For the first time, Elvis shifted focus from the brute force of his music to presenting himself more as a vocalist. Where he would often just bellow the songs out (think "Goon Squad" or most of "Get Happy!!"), on "Trust" he began to explore his range. A fair amount of this might have to do with the liner notes continual references to EC's increased drinking problems, but probably more to his budding relationship with Chris Difford of Squeeze. That friendship led to one of the album's highlights when Difford's bandmate Glenn Tillbrook joined EC on "From A Whisper To A Scream." (Squeeze got the favor returned when Elvis co-produced "East Side Story" and added his voice to the classic "Tempted.")

Elvis was also in the middle of something of a writer's draught, which meant that he polished up a few older tunes from his pre-Aim days, and left a couple of songs sounding less than stellar. "You'll Never Be A Man," "Luxembourg" and "Big Sister's Clothes" were the first times I'd ever felt that the songs on an Elvis album were filler (hence the 4 star rating). Not like it mattered, because along with "New Lace Sleeves" and "From A Whisper to a Scream," there was the magnificent "Shot With His Own Gun," a stunning piano ballad. That particular song upped the ante for Elvis the writer, as well as being perfectly realized as a vocalist. (It could also be viewed as a precursor to "Imperial Bedroom's" "The Long Honeymoon" and "Almost Blue.")

Like many of Elvis' albums, "Trust" has aged delightfully. While many may have dismissed it upon release as EC mellowing out, it was actually the maturation point where Elvis the "Angry Young Man" became the classic tunesmith that would carry into the soon to come "Imperial Bedroom."

Elvis Costello was, and is, an incredibly prolific musicmaker. "Trust" came hard and fast after "My Aim is True," "This Year's Model," "Armed Forces" and "Get Happy!" At the time it came out, it sounded like he and producer Nick Lowe had taken a step back, as each of its predecessors had broken new ground, and "Trust" did not at first seem to do so. For that reason, it seems like it is often consigned to the vast numbers of EC albums that fans cherish but other music fans skip in the face of the daunting challenge of keeping up with all his releases over the years. This is an unfortunate fate for what, in retrospect, is one of Costello's finest albums.

As is now clear, but wasn't so clear back in 1982, Elvis likes to jump genres, styles and recording techniques. "Get Happy!" with its Motown/Stax soul music influences was the first foray into an adopted style, and what "Trust" provided him was a place to marry the funkier beats from that album with the panoramic sounds of "Armed Forces," in the service of one of his strongest collections of penetrating, brilliant songs, with lyrics that showed that the young man of his first few LPs was getting older and uncomfortably wiser. It's a musical consolidation of all the strengths of his previous work, but more evolved, more lived-in, more personal. It was the first EC album where you didn't pause and think "Boy that Nick Lowe was clever to borrow that sound and mix it with that other sound." Everything seems organic and real. Don't get me wrong, the playing and arrangements on this disc are first-rate. But it seems like they were going for sounds that would last rather than impress.

The best songs, i.e. the ones cherry-picking downloaders should not miss are: "Clubland," "New Lace Sleeves," "Pretty Words," "Strict Time," "Watch Your Step," "White Knuckles" and "Shot With His Own Gun." If you want to hear his first stab at a country-western song, add "Different Finger." The rest of the songs are only slightly less compelling, so my real recommendation is to make sure you can hear the whole thing.

A wonderful album through and through,for my own opinion the finest work Costello & The Attractions did with Nick Lowe at the controls. So much as happened in the past few years musically that Elvis had perhaps started to forget it is,sometimes about the songs and not necessarily the setting. And...lol maybe I just seem to think that on the previous album Get Happy!! it was a lot more about that musical setting then it was about the songwriting.It did all seemed a but run through.It is here that Elvis Costello's music really begins to come into it's own in the way that it all began when he first dropped My Aim Is True. Musically all over the map this album has everything from chamber pop,psychedelica,blues,jazz,country/western,soul and a pretty good dose of rock n roll with that old Bo Diddly beat thrown in for good measure. What is really amazing how everything really comes togther into a music that works with the songs rather then forces the songs to work for them.Not only that but the overall album is obviously oriented around the studio as a lot of different sounds weave in and out of the overall production."Clubland" really sets off the entire idea:great song of course,a great rhythm with some excellent,jazzy piano flourishes and even some country twang in Elvis's ax!I'd go as far as saying it was his most ambitious hit up to this point."Lover's Walk" really kicks out a strong,retro rock n swing rhythm and the drum is very much the guide to it all.On "Strict Time" and "New Paper Sleeves" the music is again just plain unique,again especially that..well sometimes almost gets into this Gene Krupa kind of thing:thank you Pete Thomas!!! In possible anticipation perhaps of his Almost Blue the out and out country of "Different Finger" and the more jazz and psychedelic flavored "Big Sister's Clothes" (check out that errie revered guitar riff at the tail end) really look in one way to contemporary Nashville and in another to what people like Chris Isaak would do later in the decade. Of course this album has a handful of strong rockers but that is just it:if you can put pop smarts into a tune that rocks you usually have something fresh and special and "From A Whisper To A Scream",featuring Glenn Tillbrook is really not a lot unlike a Squeeze classic from this era either:both them and the Attractions sure made a name for themselves in the pop savvy post-punk universe and this was a great way for them to team up and see what happened. "Luxembourg" is the one cut here that most resembles the louder attack of the previous album even if it's a lot more crafted which...actually add a more bite then it takes away.Of course the mellowed out pop of "Watch Your Steps" is also a good change of pace to keep everything from losing the listener by doing altogether too much all at once.The song I find the most impressive here is "Shot With His Own Gun":the lyrics are very poetic and intense but the music...reminds me of a early 80's kind of extention of that sound that David Bowie and Mike Garson achieved on Aladdin Sane.The minor chords,jazzy caberet piano and the exotic words and singing really make this a song that comes to life all on it's own. This is really where Elvis Costello began to really explore himself as a singer and as a songwriter with plenty of well oiled experimentation to draw from as well as lots of variety. The future had a lot of great things in store for him at this point in his career.