Secret Thoughts and Terrors

When I was getting into Wise Up Ghost, Elvis Costello’s 2013 album with the Roots, “Come the Meantimes” was an early entry point, specifically two lines that always jumped out at me every time I listened: 

For me, it encapsulated the entire tone of the album–dark and unrelenting words, songs reflecting back onto themselves from EC’s own creative past, brittle fear crackling out of speakers in the form of ?uestlove’s crispy drums and Captain Kirk’s unrelenting guitar. 

“Come the Meantimes” is a circular, anxious exploration of a lover’s paranoia. There’s quasi-religious imagery tucked away within it that suggest almost the desperate pleadings of an anxious God, worried all his sacrifices were made in vain (shades of 1989’s “God’s Comic” from Spike). Or maybe it’s a worshipper realizing his protestations of faith have always landed on deaf (acutally non-existent) ears. 

You can sink into just the title and ruminate for a while. “The Meantimes” suggests a grey interregnum that isn’t even punctuated by the restlessness of boredom. Take that word apart and it’s more indicative of the America in which this album emerged, one that persists even moreso today–a literal “mean times,” where cruelty is currency and the right fears exploited on the right television stations can make you a multimillionaire. 

I use the word “claustrophobic” a lot, maybe too much, when I’m writing about music. Sometimes I’m not sure what other word I could use (okay, smartass, I can visit thesaurus.com just as easily as you can). “Come The Meantimes” gains its momentum from a kind of motionless vibration, going nowhere but burning copious amounts of fuel to get there. The Roots are the ones generating most of that energy; they’re perfect foils for EC’s hollow sneer on this track, crowding around his vocal like a pack of lions gathering to contemplate their prey. 

Music can open your eyes, expand your horizons, take you outside of yourself. Or it can force you deeper into yourself instead, forcing you to examine your own choices and where you have placed yourself in the moral architecture of the universe. If nothing else, “Come The Meantimes” illustrates that it takes just as much artistry and craft to chronicle hopelessness as it does to illustrate the alternative.