Life Is Not Short Enough

“Country Darkness” is one of the songs on Delivery Man, and it’s as good a term as any to describe the emotional landscape Costello is charting through these songs. It’s an album about the desperate frustration that lurks beneath perfectly charming and composed people, living in quiet towns throughout the course of history—men and women repressed by culture and religion, pushing down their desires so deep that they can only explode in moments of passion, anger, and betrayal. 

From that point of view, “The Name Of This Thing Is Not Love” becomes a centerpiece of the album, if only because its title encapsulates exactly how these characters are feeling. There’s room for desire, and rage, and violence and fucking, but not much room for warmth and attachment. Lust and obsession act as capable stand-ins. 

This song hits on a raw nerve for these characters; whatever these three women see in their delivery man, he does not see it in them. They’re objects, vessels, mirrors in which he’s reflected as he imagines he is, and not as he turns out to be. With the snap of a finger, he betrays and batters his lovers, and if you listen closely enough, seems to murder one of them and toss her body into the river. 

Which is terrifying for them, but he can’t bring himself to be much more than annoyed. 

It can only ever be their fault. He didn’t ask for their submission; he just acted upon it. His reactions are horrible, base, inevitable—hidden beneath a stone that could never stay unturned.