Kojack Variety

A Crooner’s Soul

Elvis Costello’s ‘Kojck Variety’ (it’s not just his variety; music legends like James Burton, Marc Ribot, Jim Keltner, Jerry Scheff, Larry Knechtel, and Pete Thomas all play on the album) acts as the softest punch to a listener in the face of music history. It’s like an Irish kiss but made American through the art of covering a song (to perfection, I might say) of what I like to call classic b tunes. In this case, the most romantic—the best pop songs ever written. EC acts as a guide for the listener to show them roads that they may have never explored before. His young listeners will most likely be bewildered and upset upon listening to it because EC doesn’t appear to be angry anymore. They will say he’s mellowed which is the worst term you could tag onto him. Can’t they hear the anger in a song like “Must You Throw Dirt in My Face”? What they don’t realize is that by singing the song in a quieter, more beautiful fashion EC has healed himself in the process. These are not just merely cover songs. EC goes back to the tunes he must have been listening to in his younger supposedly angrier years; he most likely believed more in these songs then the punk movement of the late 70’s. He was really a crooner in the end and now he truly admits it. He’s transcending himself by not taking credit for the whole thing—by not writing any of the lyrics.

There’s a song on this album called “Remove This Doubt” which I will always have with me. It’s stuck in my somnambulistic state. The whole album feels as if it was sung in the wee hours when no one was paying attention. He’s still a great rocker, too, and songs like “Strange”, “Leave My Kitten Alone” and “Payday” are proof of that. However, it is really the ballads that get to me. They’re devout pop songs all about how a woman specifically broke the singer’s heart. He’s obsessed with a woman that he can’t come into possession of. They are very well written songs because of the specifics. That’s something that pop music has forgotten all about these days. Wouldn’t you like it if Chet Baker (who EC reminds me of) sang a Bob Dylan song or Little Richards’ “Bama Lama Bama Loo”? EC is, if anything, more original here than ever.