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, King of America sold poorly and was Costello's first album since My Aim Is True (1977) to miss the UK top 10. 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
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. With tensions still high between Costello and the Attractions, the goal was to record the tracks as quickly as possible before the animosity between Costello and the band became so severe they would have to scrap the entire project. The band set up in the studio similar to a rehearsal space, reportedly up to 25 feet between the bass and drums, and used monitor speakers rather than headphones, meaning there was little separation between the instruments. Costello remembered: "This made for a booming, murky sound that made subtlety impossible." The author Graeme Thomson argued: "It was a unique approach, essentially like recording a live concert in a cavernous studio with a few microphones dotted around the room." The album was recorded at high volume like a live concert, in a way Costello felt suited the material. The band recorded most of the songs live in first takes, and a maximum of three takes, while overdubs were limited to lead or harmony vocal retakes. Costello stated in 1995: "We set up and played as loud as we did on stage. It didn't really sound like This Year's Model, but the component parts were just the four of us, and we did very few overdubs. We played as much a combo sound as possible."
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". He also restricted Nieve's parts to organ and piano, with zero solos. Costello's then-girlfriend Cait O'Riordan, the bassist for the Pogues, was present during recording, providing backing vocals on "Poor Napoleon" and "Crimes of Paris", and co-wrote "Tokyo Storm Warning" with Costello. The band also recorded a cover of Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone" (1959), which was left off the final album.
Music and lyrics Departing from the roots rock of King of America, Blood & Chocolate is a rock 'n' roll and hard rock record, with a back-to-basics 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". Joe Pelone of punknews.org summarised: "Blood & Chocolate is a lot of things. On some tracks, it's a return to early Costello's hard charged literate punk. Sometimes it combines that with the pop sensibilities Costello cultivated over the years." Thomson argues that the album title, Blood & Chocolate, "perfectly summed up the texture of the music".
Lyrically, Blood & Chocolate represents a return to the more revenge and guilt-driven lyrics of Costello's earlier releases. In Blender magazine, Douglas Wolk detailed "blistering songs about sexual despair and disgust". 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'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 of an apocalyptic and frightening world on the brink of collapse where people live for the moment and fail to consider consequences for their actions. Hilburn interprets the track as wanting the listener to "find order and balance among the confusion and chaos". The track also contains imagery detailing less-appealing aspects of 1980s society, as well as images of KKK-infested Montgomery and the Malvinas. Costello described it as a "protest song".
"Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head" features similar themes as Costello's early albums, following a man abandoned by his lover, who has rejected him. Perone describes it as a conventional pop song compared to the previous track, and "less hard-hitting", drawing comparisons to "the aesthetics" of Imperial Bedroom (1982). "I Want You" follows the narrator's "stalker-like obsession" with his departed lover. Variously described as a "slow walk" and "an extended psychosexual drama", 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).
Side two
"Honey, Are You Straight or Are You Blind?" is a rock and roll and blues song that is more lively and cheerful compared to "I Want You". In it, the narrator's lover is jealous of a perceived affair between him and another woman. "Blue Chair" is a power pop track that Costello said took musical inspiration from Prince for its arrangement. Taking place in a pub, a man informs the narrator that his lover has begun an affair with the man; the narrator is supportive rather than resentful. Hinton interprets the "blue chair" as possibly "therapy, or drink, or drugged oblivion". The track possesses irony and different vocal tones between the choruses and verses offer contrasting moods. "Battered Old Bird" observes the beaten-down occupants of a run-down boarding house. Costello said that it was partially based on real people from his childhood. Its music features changes in volume and intensity, using various studio effects through tape manipulation.