or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

With King of America Elvis Costello returned to the position of critic’s darling. Instead of recording another rootsy album sans Attractions, he headed back into the studio with Nick Lowe and the full Attractions band, finally giving fans the return to rock they had been calling for since Almost Blue.

“Uncomplicated”, which features the album’s titular line, certainly promises big things. The song is rock and roll, no doubt, but the musical backing is more inventive than anything heard on a Costello record since “Beyond Belief”. If the rest of the album sounded this good, Blood & Chocolate would deserve the place it has on many best-of Costello lists. “I Hope You’re Happy Now” and “Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head” pick up where the pop-rock new wave of This Years Model and Armed Forces left off. “Tokyo Storm Warning”, the album’s abysmal-selling single, is enjoyable for the first two minutes, but is far too silly and unimaginative to stay charming for the six-plus minutes it goes on. “I Want You” considered by many to be one of Costello’s greatest achievements, is as malicious as Dylan’s “Ballad Of a Thin Man” and Cohen’s “The Future”. The lyrics are a far cry from the happily engaged Costello of the last album. The tune is, indeed, a good one and it complements a foul mood perfectly but lacks an element of humanity that makes Costello’s early diatribes so much more versatile and satisfying.

“Honey, Are You Straight Or Are You Blind?” foreshadows the brand of rock found on most of Costello’s solo releases hereafter. The song is energetic, but it’s no revelation. “Blue Chair” is a nice pop ballad with lackluster lyrics. Like, “Honey, Are You Straight Or Are You Blind”, “Crimes of Paris” sounds like a first-draft of what Costello would perfect on Brutal Youth. Blood & Chocolate is plagued by awkward rhymes. “Poor Napoleon” features some of the worst (most notably “I can’t lie in this bed anymore, it burns my skin/you can take the truthful things you’ve said to me/and put them on the head of a pin”). The song is the weakest on the album, comprised of terrible lyrics, an uninspired melody and an irritating spoken-bit by Cait O’Riordan.

Blood & Chocolate is an uneven record. The great songs are great, but it’s packed with filler. Costello seems to have done his best to make himself difficult to like, from stupid name changes (he’s credited as both “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Eamonn Singer” but never as “Elvis Costello”) to the obnoxious use of Esperanto in the liner notes. It’s difficult to understand why so many herald the album as his masterpiece, when it was really a pale imitation of what he could once do throughout an entire album. King of America suggested that Costello intended to age gracefully, but Blood & Chocolate was a sharp step backwards, illustrating that maybe Costello no longer had what made him so great earlier on in his career.