Elvis Costello's Warner Brothers debut saw him shooting for new standards of literacy and sophistication. Leaving behind the raw spleen of Blood and Chocolate, Spike used a multitude of guests and luminaries--Paul McCartney, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, guitarist Marc Ribot--to flesh out wordy, acerbic tales of soldiers and graceless women (for example, the Margaret Thatcher of the enraged "Tramp the Dirt Down"). For many fans, the songs were too artful by half, with knotty arrangements that belied an absence of memorable music. The Beatle-esque hit "Veronica" notwithstanding (a McCartney collaboration), Spike smacked of cleverness on the grand scale. --Barney Hoskyns
