ELVIS COSTELLO Armed Forces (Columbia)

Oh, I just don’t know where to begin...

...So how’s about a freeze frame click-click-clicking of El Fuss on all fours in his backyard nightshade garden extirpating thwarted concupiscence by the bushelful...Or him breast beating poor Bebe, every bruising lash sizzling with anger precipitated by evidence of the fuckin-place jogging (calisthenics practiced by mirror loving pseudo-sexual jocks of either (and all) gender(s) who see themselves rolling on the carpet with the handiest imitation of this year’s model, reveling in the selfserving zipless salvational pragmatism of Erica Jong-type behavorial guidance (pity the poor immoral grunt)...Or perhaps a still photo of a ceramic vase displaying an existential bouquet of oopsy-daisies tottering on the edge of our neo-hero’s mantelpiece, with a voice-over reading of Roethke’s My shadow pinned against a sweating wall—sub-captioned Welcome To Paradise’s Weeds And Wrecks. Well, nowthat I have begun...