Song of the Day 7/12: Elvis Costello, “Sneaky Feelings”
When Catbite covered this song from Elvis Costello’s debut album at the Arden Shady Grove Music Fest, El Somnambulo cited it as evidence of the Philly ska band’s good taste, and I certainly won’t disagree. “My Aim Is True” has lost some luster in recent years, but when it was released in 1977 it didn’t just hit, it detonated. Costello managed to fuse the attitude of punk with the tunefulness of pop, seasoning the mix with touches of soul, country and reggae — and did it in just four six-hour sessions — to nearly universal acclaim. Perhaps the most amazing part is that the backing musicians aren’t punk rockers but the American bar band Clover, which had relocated from San Francisco to London to take part in the pub rock scene. Most of its members joined Huey Lewis to form the News.
The soul-inflected “Sneaky Feelings” is one of the LP’s deep cuts. It closes side 1 of the vinyl LP but was easy to overlook because it immediately follows the album’s tour de force, “Alison,” plus it’s a virtual carbon copy of a song on side 2, “Pay It Back.” It has the same blue-eyed soul feel that Graham Parker was deploying at the time, though without the horn section. A jangle-pop band from New Zealand took the title as its name.
Costello put together the Attractions after recording the album. Their first single together, “Watching the Detectives,” was tacked onto American editions of the LP. He even re-recorded all the songs on the album with the Attractions, but the resulting sessions have never been released. Conversely, Costello never played a live show with the musicians who first recorded until most of Clover reunited to back him for a San Francisco charity show in 2007.
Here’s CATBITE covering the tune.
In 1977 I was a little shy of album buying age, but I saw this in the Nichols Discount store record section and was transfixed*. Without hearing a single note or lyric, I knew I needed whatever that guy was up to in my life.
By college I was playing the album relentlessly. I’m not sure what luster it has lost (?) but, for me, it has lost less than zero luster.
*I think I’ve mentioned my Dover Nichols epiphany here in the comments before, but it is such a vivid memory. It was like everything that came before it was phony beatlemania.
I based that comment on the way Rolling Stone downgraded it in its last updating of its Top 500 Albums list, from No. 168 to No. 430. I think the former is much closer to the mark, but then I’m a rockist.