Music Review: When I Was Cruel No. 2

When a song gets under your skin, it can lodge there, fester and become a cancer. You can't escape it. Such a tune is When I Was Cruel No. 2 by Elvis Costello, a song that appears on his excellent 2002 album, When I Was Cruel. The song lasts more than seven minutes, and every one of them is necessary. It's a sparse, hypnotic track highlighted by Steve Nieve's wanting keyboards and a sample from Mina's "Un bacio è troppo poco." This song has a timeless, unworldly feeling to it, one that will leave you wrapped in its spell. As usual for any Costello song, his lyrics are literate, confusing and alluring: "The entrance hall was arranged with hostesses and ushers who turned out to be the younger wives nursing schoolgirl crushes, parting the waves of those few feint friends; fingers once offered are now too heavy to extend." I'm not sure what he's saying, but I dig it