Elvis Costello's Warner Brothers debut saw him shooting for new standards of literacy and sophistication. Leaving behind the raw spleen of Blood and Chocolate, Spike used a multitude of guests and luminaries - Paul McCartney, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, guitarist Marc Ribot - to flesh out wordy, acerbic tales of soldiers and graceless women (for example, the Margaret Thatcher of the enraged 'Tramp the Dirt Down').
