Listening to Elvis Costello is like walking down a dark, empty street and hearing another set of heels. His music doesn't make you dance, it makes you jump. It doesn't matter that he's stalking his obsessions and not you, because nobody ought to be this sure of his obsessions. But Costello appears determined never to reach that age when, as Joan Didion once put it, "the wounds begin to heal whether one wants them to or not." This Year's Model … is Costello's attempt to make certain those wounds stay open.

Elvis Costello feeds off terror; sometimes it almost seems as if he deliberately conjures it up so he can finger its jagged grain and twist its neck. On last year's My Aim Is True, the fear centered on failure ("Mystery Dance") and rejection ("I'm Not Angry"). On This Year's Model, it zeros in on success: Costello is afraid...