'Spike' was my first Elvis album, and it totally blew me away. 'Veronica' was the only Costello song I'd (consciously) heard before, and even though I loved that one, I wasn't at all prepared for this versatile masterpiece. I couldn't believe how one artist could master so many styles, lyrically as well as musically. Still don't.

'Get Happy' is my favourite Elvis album, but I can't listen to it for days at a time, like I do to 'Spike'. The brilliant Angry Young Man of 'My Aim Is True' is still in there somewhere, but here, most of the songs seem to have different narrators in them (or they're not obsessively centered around him), and different musical backings to support them, all perfect. I especially like Marc Ribot's guitar work and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

12 out of the 15 tracks on 'Spike' has been my favourite Elvis song at some point (yes, even the funkier 'Chewing Gum' & 'Pads, Paws & Claws'!); right now, it's 'Deep Dark Truthful Mirror'. It's really hard to say that one song is better than another, though - it's like comparing Guthrie, Mingus, Lennon, Dylan and Bacharach or something.

This record made me a die-hard Costello fan. I even doubt that I'd like MUSIC as much as I do if I hadn't heard it. So if you don't know most of Costello's stuff already, and you're obviously not looking for simple, radio-friendly party music (even though half of this should have been hits) that all sounds the same, I would recommend this or the 'Extreme Honey' compilation as appetizers.

It's not only rock'n'roll, but you'll like it.

This is Costello at his most varied: you get melancholy Celtic tinged balladry on "Tramp the Dirt Down" and "Any King's Schilling", funky instrumental horn number "Stalin Malone", loose cacophonous rock and roll on "Pads, Paws, and Claws", the circus-music-from-Hell of "Miss MacBeth" and avant-pop meter-shifting "Chewing Gum". This also proved to have one of Costello's few pop charters with his Paul McCartney collaboration on "Veronica", a bristling snappy pop number.

Though this doesn't seem to get the respect of other Elvis outings, I find myself wondering why. Track for track, there's little here I find subpar and it's extremely listenable. What's here musically NEEDS to be here...removing instruments wouldn't improve the songs that are multi-layered and the sparer songs don't really need to be "beefed up" either.

HIGHLIGHTS:
"This Town" is a snide materialism anthem that insists nice guys finish last: "You're nobody 'til everybody in this town/Thinks you're a bastard". Roger McGuinn and Paul McCartney guest on guitar and bass. "Let Him Dangle" offers a tale of a man wrongly convicted as proof of the inequity of capital punishment and casts a jaundiced eye toward the participants. ("Outside Wandsworth Prison there was horror and hate/As the hangman shook bentley's hand to calculate his weight..") This also possesses the most interesting "instrumental contribution": Michael Blair plays Oldsmobile hubcap(!). "God's Comic" imagines a Deity who lounges in bed drinking soda as he observes Earth and wonders if the monkeys shouldn't have been offered dominion instead. The "Now I'm dead..." chorus is infectious. Anti-Margaret Thatcher ode "Tramp the Dirt Down" is pure vitriol as Costello gleefully imagines ensuring she's good and buried upon her demise. (He'd get his wish a year after this was released.) It features great lines like "And then (they) expect you to say "thank you" straighten up, look proud and pleased/Because you've only got the symptoms, you haven't got the whole disease". "Pads, Paws, and Claws" details a dysfunctional couple: he betrayed by alcoholism, she by the thrill she gets eviscerating him with her tongue in his stupors.

LOWS:
Costello's indictment of the work-a-day soldier in "Any King's Schilling" is weak: He never really sharpens his claws on the lyrics. There's no hook to speak of in "Coal Train Robberies".

BOTTOM LINE:
The sneering Amazon review aside, this just plain SOUNDS GOOD: a great and varied disc that still sounds cohesive despite the multitude of textures here. I would NOT recommend this edition, however (unless you are very short of cash) as Rhino has reissued this with a bonus disc of interesting demos (a version of "Stalin Malone" with vocals intact, for instance and the Disney-esque "Dip Your Big Toe in the Milk of Human Kindness") for a modest cost.

My liking for the music of Elvis Costello goes back a long way, way back to the beginning of his appearance on the international scene. I don't have all his recordings and because he is so prolific, I haven't been able to keep up with everything he's done. But I do have a dozen or so of his albums and with that sample in mind, consider Spike to be one of his best.
I bought Spike on cassette back when it first came out and liked it enormously, but hadn't listened to it for several years until I recently spotted it while shopping for CDs. As memories of it were fond, I bought it and when I put it on, all the old memories came flooding back. Spike is a tremendous recording, with virtually nothing I'd consider filler. Song after song, it continues to delight fifteen years after it was first issued.
Though I am often politically at odds with Costello, I like his intelligent, straightforward, biting and caustic musical attacks on what he considers to be the sources of the world's ills. I also like his lyrically blunt and candid approach to interpersonal relations.
Here are my favorites: a sneering This Town, the anti death penalty anthem Let Him Dangle (I disagree, but at least he has an argument), the call to introspection in Deep Dark Truthful Mirror, the playful Veronica, the melancholy God's Comic, the wonderful horn-driven Chewing Gum, the clever but hate-filled anti Margaret Thatcher screed Tramp the Dirt Down, the horn-based instrumental Stalin Malone, the dreamy Satellite, Miss MacBeth, Coal Train Robberies, and the plaintive Last Boat Leaving. Hey, that's almost the whole album, and yes, that's how good it is!
If you are already an Elvis Costello fan, and don't have this, what's holding you back? If you are new to his music, you certainly can't go wrong starting with Spike. It is one of the best albums of its time and it represents the high-water mark of Costello's huge reservoir of creativity.

Revisiting this album recently, it still works for me on. "...This Town" has outstanding bass work from Paul McCartney, and "Baby Plays Around" is a master torch song from the modern Master of the genre. I happen to love "Pads, Paws and Claws" and "Chewing Gum", too, although that may put me in the minority. Everything's a matter of taste in music, but if you really love the craft of song and excellent musicianship, you have to appreciate this album!

I have had this recording since I was 7 years old when my dad gave it to me. I wore two tapes out listening to it. I am now 18 and have invested in the CD. It is musically complex and loaded with metaphors. My favorite track is Stalin Malone with the Dirty Dozen. This is the only Elvis Costello CD that I actively listen to, I even like Pads, Paws, and Claws....It is a great CD for any music lover and I highly recommend it.