Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Love in a Trash Can [CD-single] [Enhanced] [Import]
Mozart: Piano Sonatas Nos. 8, 11 ("Alla turca"), 16, 18 [Import]
Amazon.com
"Masterpiece?" was the word--in Columbia Records' ad campaign, anyway--when Imperial Bedroom appeared in 1982. As the album plays, though, the emphasis occasionally seems better placed on the question mark. This is a very good, sometimes dazzling album, but as a heart wrencher it holds not a candle to King of America, and as a singular example of elegant pop craft it can't top Costello's 1998 collaboration with Burt Bacharach, Painted from Memory (not too shabby as a heart wrencher itself, come to think of it). Of course, there are plenty of small miracles, and one huge one in the mind-bending "Beyond Belief." Imperial Bedroom is gorgeous more often than not, but in a way, there's more heart in the simple Smokey Robinson and the Miracles cover, "From Head to Toe," that appears as a bonus track on the Rykodisc edition. --Rickey Wright