The Bell Goes...

In my little red book, Elvis Costello's Painted From Memory, his historic collaboration with Burt Bacharach, is just a tiny bit overrated by its fans. No, I'm not one of those Costello fans who swear by his first five records and feel he's wandered off into pretentious dabbling since; quite the contrary (I think The Juliet Letters, for instance, is somewhat underrated by most fans). It's simply a matter of taste; I relish the songcraft on Painted but find the full Bacharach pop-orchestral sound occasionally cloying (this revue rendered the master's songs in styles I relate to more wholeheartedly), and I find some of the vocal demands of the material beyond Costello's reach.

One song I do love, though, is one of the record's more overlooked tunes, and the one I most eagerly picked out and learned on the piano when the record came out. It's "The Sweetest Punch," a chiming carousel spiked with tension. Like "Baianá," its main melody spells out its main chord, in this case a lush Gmaj9:

Ninths weren't a central flavor in Elvis Costello's songs until his Burt collaboration. There's a prominent one as early as 1982's Imperial Bedroom's jazzy "Town Cryer" ("I'm a little down"), but the way he hammers a minor 9 chord on 1991's Mighty Like a Rose's "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" ("I saw a girl") makes it sound like a new toy he's found that he can't put down. But ninths are all over Painted From Memory: a major one to express throbbing regret on "I still have that other girl in my head," a minor one for the aching trumpet riff that opens of "God Give Me Strength."

On "Sweetest Punch" the major ninth chord sounds more like a joyful cartwheel, though its swirl takes on a less happy connotation as the song unfolds. And it's just one of the song's harmonic riches. The melody opens on a 2nd interval, and A over a G chord, and leaps up to another, the F# over an Em:

In the song's anxious pre-chorus, he bobs on a disorientingly bright F# major chord over an E pedal, as he somewhat tentatively lays out his case against his lover. It makes him sound like he's quivering with uncertainty as much as anger:

The next line, frankly, has one of Costello's less felicitous lyrical phrasings: "Words start to fly/My glass jaw and I/Will find one to walk right into." As he sings "jaw" to sound like "jar," I always misheard this as "Words start to fly my glass jar," but even corrected it's an awkward turn—the line breaks confuse the action, which isn't very clear anyway (he and his "glass jaw" are going to "walk right into" a...word?). But then we hear the song's punch line, literally:

When the churn of the main melody returns, it now sounds like a musical illustration of a cartoon character knocked silly and seeing stars. I couldn't help but notice the vocal flourish he adds on "notice." Yes, it's his and my old friend, the major sixth (an A over the C chord):

In all it makes a strangely upbeat variation on the jealous-lover shtick that has been Costello's bread and butter since "Alison," "I Want You," "Baby Plays Around," "Still Too Soon to Know." But I for one find its odd, insistent sunniness in the face of heartbreak exhilarating.