Elvis Costello and the Attractions “Blood & Chocolate” (1986)

Gotz ‘dem ol’ mean woman blues again, brother? Sometimes when the fairer sex brings you down into a pit of despair and world-is-crashing helplessness, you gotta put down that never-ending bottle of Jameson and saunter into the studio with your best dudes and pulverize that anguish into something worthwhile. This is Declan Patrick at his most vitriolic, spewing venom and catharsis, ripping apart low-down, no-good rotten women while his uncharacteristically raw sounding, yet always reliable Attractions whip up a frenzy. the record is admittedly top-heavy, but what a fucking tremendous Side A, from the vindictive, organ-fueled anthem “I Hope You’re Happy Now” to the drunken 3 a.m. sad-sack ballad “Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head.” But it’s all foothills to the Mt. Everest of Costello’s career: the caustic, languishing, incomparable “I Want You.” this one track, with its slow build-up and quietly intense vocals, captures all the contradicting feelings of anger, disgust, disillusionment, and futility, and the searing, unrelenting pain that comes with that horrible, carnal knowledge: yep, it happened, and yep, it was THAT asshole. And the most horrifying part: it ends not in murder or heartbreak like other paeans to adultery, but in begrudging and hopeless acceptance. Perhaps because “I Want You” raises the bar so exponentially high, what follows pales in comparison and is almost entirely forgettable, though “Poor Napoleon” has one hell of an addictive chorus. to me, an idiosyncratic artist with a long career is always the most compelling at his or her meanest and nastiest, and this record – at least the first half, anyway – exposes all the darkness stirring underneath that bespectacled veneer. —S Paul Brown