Blood & Chocolate is the eleventh studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, and his ninth album with the Attractions—keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas (no relation). It was released on 15 September 1986 through Demon and Columbia Records. After mostly using outside musicians for his previous album King of America, Costello reunited the Attractions and his former producer Nick Lowe for Blood & Chocolate. Recorded in London during a period of heightened tensions between Costello and the Attractions, the tracks were recorded quickly, mostly live in first takes, while the band were set up simultaneously in the same room at Olympic Studios. Costello's then-girlfriend, Cait O'Riordan of the Pogues, sang backing vocals on two tracks and co-wrote another.
A departure from the roots rock of King of America, Blood & Chocolate musically and lyrically recalls Costello's early works, particularly This Year's Model (1978). Featuring a garage-sounding production, it is a straightforward rock and roll album with revenge and guilt-driven lyrics and imagery drawn from nightmarish worlds. After King of America was credited to "the Costello Show", Blood & Chocolate was credited once again to "Elvis Costello and the Attractions". The cover artwork is a painting by Costello himself titled "Napoleon Dynamite".
Released only seven months after King of America, Blood & Chocolate was Costello's lowest-charting album yet, reaching number 16 in the UK and number 84 in the US. Both of its over six-minute singles—"Tokyo Storm Warning" and "I Want You"—performed poorly. At the time, music critics considered the album substandard compared to Costello's previous works, though others deemed it a return to form for the artist. Retrospective reviews consider Blood & Chocolate one of Costello's finest, being praised for its simplicity and performances. Following the album's release and supporting tour, Costello did not work with the Attractions again for eight years. It has been reissued several times with bonus tracks, including in 1995 and 2002.
Background
Elvis Costello recorded his tenth studio album King of America in Los Angeles between July and September 1985. A roots rock and Americana album, it was recorded in collaboration with T Bone Burnett and various American session musicians dubbed "the Confederates". Costello had intended for his regular backing band, the Attractions, to appear on half of the album, but by the time they arrived half of the album was already completed. The Attractions were upset at their sidelining, leading to tense sessions; they ultimately appeared on only one track, "Suit of Lights". Released in February 1986, The album's poor commercial performance led Costello to write songs more akin to his early work with the Attractions, namely This Year's Model (1978) and Armed Forces (1979).
Recording
thumb|left|upright=0.70|alt=An older man with glasses and gray hair|Blood & Chocolate was produced by [[Nick Lowe (pictured in 2017), who had not produced a Costello album since 1981's Trust.]]
Only six months after the Los Angeles sessions for King of America, Costello entered Olympic Studios in London with the Attractions—the keyboardist Steve Nieve, the bassist Bruce Thomas and the drummer Pete Thomas (no relation)—to record an album. The musician Nick Lowe acted as producer for the first time in five years, while Colin Fairley was engineer. Lowe was reportedly brought back due to his history with the band—he had produced Costello's first four albums with the Attractions—and his ability to capture the raw sound Costello desired for the project. Costello wrote new songs using both guitar and simply beating his hands on a table to find rhythms; "Blue Chair", "I Hope You're Happy Now" and "Next Time Round" were held over from the King of America sessions. The songs fit the simplistic style of his working relationship with the Attractions, often only featuring two or three chords. A one-off session at London's Eden Studios with Jimmy Cliff yielded a track called "Seven Day Weekend" for the film Club Paradise (1986).
The recording sessions lasted from March to May 1986.
The experience did little to ease the tensions in the band. Lowe remembered it was "a much more uptight situation ... There wasn't such a gang feeling." Nevertheless, Lowe admitted to encouraging the tensions, believing they "added to" the recording environment. Lowe also provided acoustic guitar on several numbers. Costello used his Telecaster guitar, which he felt gave his parts "a very harsh edge". organ and guitar-led sound reminiscent of This Year's Model. In his book The Words and Music of Elvis Costello, the author James E. Perone describes the album as "noisy, messy, loose and at times under-rehearsed sounding". The album has also been classified as new wave and identified by later reviewers as featuring an early grunge sound. Other writers for Stereogum said the record offers a "terrific pub-rocking gut punch". Several songs contain imagery drawn from nightmarish worlds, offering "surreal snatches of stories detailing the dark agonies wreaked on a tortured soul by a Love Gone Mad." Thomson splits the record in two: "The repetitive, mono-rhythmic nightmares" of tracks like "Uncomplicated" and "Honey, Are You Straight or Are You Blind?"; and "the brighter pop" of tracks like "Blue Chair" and "Next Time Round". On the record's original release, Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times said that "one of the album's central themes is man's capacity to endure. There are people and situations in Blood & Chocolate as dark, despairing and hopeless as those in [[Bruce Springsteen|[Bruce] Springsteen's]] Nebraska (1982). Still, life goes on."
Side one
"Uncomplicated" utilises a "lumbering" beat that conveys a "feeling of monotony and claustrophobia". Its lyrics, offering themes of love, disgust, revenge and passion, were interpreted by Perone as detailing a relationship with a controlling man. "I Hope You're Happy Now" was compared by the author David Gouldstone to This Year's Model "No Action", wherein the narrator condemns his ex-lover and her new partner. The biographer Brian Hinton stated it is a "song of jealousy" that is "lovingly sung". Perone says the instrumental performance, "a Wall of Sound-like block of rock band texture", highlights the anger of the lyrics. The over six-minute "Tokyo Storm Warning" lacks a narrative, instead presenting various snapshots it begins quietly before growing in intensity as the narrator harbours feelings of resentment, jealousy, lust and anger towards her, further revealing darker and more obsessive qualities over its six-minute runtime. By the end, the character's declarations of "I want you" turn into weeps, closing with Costello's voice alone. The track's instrumental builds to match the narrator's anger. Several commentators have compared the song's setting and style to the Beatles' "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" (1969). While King of America had been credited to "the Costello Show", Blood & Chocolate reverts to the former credit of Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Hilburn believed the reversion to Costello's stage name was for "greater consumer recognition". It arrived on LP, CD and cassette formats, the last of which was packaged as a red and gold pastiche of a Cadbury's Bourneville bar.
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Blood & Chocolate received mixed-to-positive reviews on release.
Several reviewers criticised Blood & Chocolate as substandard compared to Costello's previous works. Others felt it was a return to form for Costello
The album's garage-sounding production received mixed reactions. The album also placed at number three in Melody Maker album of the year list. NME placed it at number 13 in their end-of-year list.
Legacy
In a retrospective article Ultimate Classic Rock Courtney E. Smith described Blood & Chocolate as an "end-of-an-era record".
Retrospective reviews
Retrospectively, Blood & Chocolate has ranked as one of Costello's finest records. Perone and Pelone commented on its underproduced nature during a period of "glossy '80s" production, The band's performances were praised for their energy, although several agreed the album loses steam by its second half.
In 2000, Blood & Chocolate was voted number 475 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2013, NME placed the album at number 483 in their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The album was also included in the 2006 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Reissues
Blood & Chocolate was reissued by Demon/Rykodisc in September 1995 with six bonus tracks, including the 1987 single version of "Blue Chair".
Blood & Chocolate was reissued again on CD, with no bonus tracks, in June 2007 by Hip-O Records and Universal Music Group. An LP reissue by UM<sup>e</sup> followed in November 2015, again with no bonus tracks.
Track listing
All tracks written by Declan MacManus (Elvis Costello) except as noted; track timings taken from Rhino 2002 reissue. except where noted:
- Elvis Costello – vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar; bellows (4), canes (4), knives (4), Vox Continental electric organ (6), harmonium (8), bass guitar (10), tambourine (10)
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