Punch the Clock is the eighth studio album by the English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, and his seventh with the Attractions—keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas (no relation). It was released on 5 August 1983 through F-Beat Records in the United Kingdom and Columbia Records in the United States. Produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, the album was Costello's attempt at making a commercial record following years of dwindling commercial success. It was recorded at London's AIR Studios in early 1983 and features contributions from the TKO Horns and Afrodiziak.
Featuring genres such as new wave, pop rock, R&B and soul, commentators have compared the album's sound to Costello's previous records Armed Forces (1979) and Get Happy!! (1980). The songs are filled with catchy choruses and lyrics covering relationships and political themes. The record contains Costello's version of "Shipbuilding", co-written with Langer and featuring a trumpet solo by Chet Baker. The album takes its title from a lyric in "The Greatest Thing" and the cover artwork was designed by Phil Smee.
Extensively promoted through live performances, Punch the Clock yielded Costello's first US Top 40 hit, "Everyday I Write the Book". "Pills and Soap" was released as a single under a pseudonym and through Costello's own IMP label, which reached number 16 in the UK. The album was his best-selling since Get Happy!!, reaching number three in the UK and number 24 in the US, eventually certified gold in both countries. Despite its success, Costello later expressed disdain for the record, finding its sound dated.
The album received mixed-to-positive reviews from music critics on release and in later decades. Many highlighted individual tracks, particularly "Shipbuilding" and "Pills and Soap", but felt it was below the standards set by his previous works. Nevertheless, NME ranked Punch the Clock the best album of 1983 and, thirty years later, number 345 in their list of "the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". It has been reissued multiple times with bonus tracks.
Background Elvis Costello released his seventh studio album Imperial Bedroom in July 1982. Despite receiving critical acclaim, its modest commercial performance forced the artist to reevaluate his musical style. His American label, Columbia Records, remained eager for another success akin to 1979's Armed Forces and showed little interest in his less-commercial works. He had garnered a loyal fanbase—largely through his own merits—but Costello knew his heavily artistic and challenging material was doing him more harm than good, so he decided to change direction with his next record. Having already co-written the song "Shipbuilding" with producer Clive Langer for musician Robert Wyatt, whose original version charted at number 36 in the UK in May 1983, Costello chose Langer and his production partner Alan Winstanley to produce his next album. Langer and Winstanley were one of the most popular production teams in Britain at the time, having recently had several hit singles with groups such as Madness, Dexys Midnight Runners and the Teardrop Explodes.
Costello and his backing band the Attractions—keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas and drummer Pete Thomas—toured Britain from mid-September to early-October 1982, road-testing several new songs that would appear on his next album, including his own interpretation of "Shipbuilding" and "Everyday I Write the Book", which was written quickly one night in September and performed the following evening. He continued writing new material for the rest of the year, debuting working versions of "Mouth Almighty", "Everyday I Write the Book", "The Comedians", "Pills and Soap" and "The World and His Wife" during three Christmas concerts in Liverpool and London in late December. These performances featured new arrangements of songs with a horn section.
Recording Rehearsals for Costello's eighth studio LP began in early 1983. His goal was to tailor the album toward hit singles and less on critical acclaim, stating at the time: "Counting [1981's] Trust, we'd gone three records without any substantial hit apart from 'Good Year for the Roses'. You have to consider if you allow that contact with the mainstream audience to be served for too long, you may lose the freedom to do what you want to do." The sessions commenced on 27 January 1983 at AIR Studios in London, the same studio used for Imperial Bedroom.
Unlike the more relaxed approach of Imperial Bedroom producer Geoff Emerick, Langer and Winstanley inserted themselves into the creative process, structuring the songs intently and left little room for improvisation; the former wanted the band to play their parts the same way over and over again. Langer commented: "We don't have any morals when it comes to studio craft. We always mix in sections, then stick it together afterwards." Discussing the duo's process in an interview with Record Collector in 1995, Costello said that "in the past, we'd never conformed to any great production design.[...] This was the first time we'd taken a formal approach, and to some extent it really worked."
With Langer's influence, Costello wrote "more rhythmic songs" than he was used to. Having written the majority of Imperial Bedroom on piano, the producer instructed him to work on guitar to create "more lively material", arguing that he had only become known for "the most cynical and disillusioned songs" that pervaded Imperial Bedroom. This process yielded a pair of "proud and wishful songs" on "Love and Marriage": "The Greatest Thing" and "Let Them All Talk", and a couple about the "Ugly Truth": "Mouth Almighty" and "Charm School". Langer felt the singer could write "incredible pop music", later reflecting: "I think he accepted that that's what we did as producer: [have] hits. He always reacts against what he's done before, so we went for it. We tried to get singles."
Other than the Attractions, the sessions employed several outside musicians who helped shape the album's sound. The singers Caron Wheeler and Claudia Fontaine, known as Afrodiziak, contributed backing vocals to several songs, improvising all their parts. The same horn section from the Christmas shows, now dubbed the TKO Horns, were also brought in. Consisting of Big Jim Paterson on trombone, Jeff Blythe on alto saxophone and Paul Speare on tenor saxophone, the horns utilised the sound they had fashioned for their work in Dexys Midnight Runners. To not mimic the sound entirely, Costello added the trumpeter Dave Plews to the horns; the latter's prior commitments as a member of Eurythmics' touring band led to his substitution on "The World and His Wife" by Stuart Robson. String arrangements were conducted by David Bedford, Morris Pert contributed percussion, while Chet Baker played a trumpet solo on "Shipbuilding". Although Langer felt the band enjoyed playing with other musicians in the studio, not all of them were convinced. Bruce Thomas later stated: "Those trendy production values. Everything gated together, very bright and shiny. It wasn't our thing, but it worked on a couple of tracks."
In later decades, Langer asserted that the production was a mutually creative process: "At certain times I would have control, other times I'd just let him do it, but if he really didn't like something it wouldn't go on, it was as simple as that." Nevertheless, Costello felt that he lost control of the studio and was difficult on the Attractions as a result, saying, "it's the only time I've given myself over to the production sound, rather than working in collaboration with the producer." The artist wanted the outtakes "Heathen Town" and "Flirting Kind" on the finished album, but kept "Love Went Mad" at Langer's insistence; he stated in the album's 1995 reissue liner notes that he devised a scheme to replace "Love Went Mad" with "Heathen Town" after the initial vinyl pressing. The album was mixed outside of London at Genetic Studios in Streatley, Berkshire.
Music and lyrics
A more rock-oriented effort than Imperial Bedroom, the author Graeme Thomson described Punch the Clock as an attempt "to be a slicker, more calculated take on the pop-soul sound". Characterised by critics as new wave, pop rock, soul, and R&B, the author Mick St. Michael opined that the LP showed the widest variety of musical styles since Trust. Critics drew comparisons to both Armed Forces and 1980's Get Happy!! In NME, Graham Lock identified musical references from more widely-known acts such as the Beatles to more obscure acts such as Lewis Furey. In The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote that Punch embraces genres from 1960s soul, late Beatles psychedelia and cool jazz, "compacting and juxtaposing these allusions with a dazzling sleight of hand". AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine found Langer and Winstanley's production gives the album a "slick, glossy surface".
According to the author James E. Perone, the songs are filled with catchy choruses and "easy, safe wordplay". He also believed the lack of uniquely British references made Punch the Clock more accessible to American audiences compared to Costello's prior works. Lock wrote that the lyrics contain bouts of black humour are and presented with "calmness and compassion" that makes them more "chilling"; the biographer Brian Hinton felt they amounted to "a terrifying world picture". He wrote:
The biographer David Gouldstone found Punch the Clock to be Costello's "most sustained and powerful political statement since Armed Forces", saying that political tracks such as "Shipbuilding", "The Invisible Man", "King of Thieves" and "Pills and Soap", and others such as "Charm School" all offer a brief glimpse at "the workings of the world at large". Hinton also felt that some songs present commentaries on Thatcherism and Reaganomics, wherein humanity is "reduced to an economic transaction".
Side one The album's opener, "Let Them All Talk", evokes 1960s Motown through the use of brass instrumentation. In the lyrics, which serve as a reminder that time is lost as it passes, the narrator has lost his girlfriend and all hope for the future. The theme that "talk" is "cheap and meaningless" is resonated by the horns. Hinton argues that the "fa-fa-fa" section's echo of Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" (1977) foreshadows the rest of the album's impulse to inflict violence. "Everyday I Write the Book" has a retro feel in its lyrics and R&B musical style. AllMusic's Mark Deming summarised: "Both lyrically and melodically, the song suggested an updated variant on classic '60s soul, with the influence of Smokey Robinson peeking through Costello's extended literary metaphor in yet another look at the complexities of romance." Through heavy wordplay, the song concerns the breakdown of a relationship but the author turns to his pen and paper as a way to envision a better connection; he is already working on a sequel in which he wins her back. With its relaxed vocal, the song's lack of a happy ending is juxtaposed with a reflective and humorous tone. Deming said its theme is that "love doesn't last, but it's not bad for as long as it chooses to stick around".