ELVIS COSTELLO LOVES HIM... BUT NOBODY ELSE HAS EVER HEARD OF HIM! WE BRING YOU MARSHALL CRENSHAW — THE MOST ANONYMOUS NAME IN POP.

SNAP: WALDO; CACKLE: CRENSHAW; POP: RICHARD COOK

You know how a pop tune can give you a sudden dizzying shiver, something that bursts up through your head and makes you step lighter and faster for a few moments, triggered by chords or beats that key out a secret thrill in your marrow? I've felt that a few times lately, and it's come from the instinctive mastery displayed in Marshall Crenshaw's American pop.

In Crenshaw's hands, pop music is the stuff of celebration. He's taken his memories of '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll radio and fashioned an exceptionally personal variation that takes its virtues in spontaneous simplicity and a precarious line between wisdom and naivety. It seems like the appearance of a revivalist touting 'classic pop' credentials is a perennial phenomenon; but Crenshaw has bypassed slavish retreads (The Flamin' Groovies) and any morass of stylistic effect (Dwight Twilley) for something far closer to the bone.

As the jubilant essay on rockabilly 'The Usual Thing' so clearly denotes, Crenshaw wants it neat and sweet and rough and ready. Smart enough to engage the intelligence but sufficiently fresh to sidestep pastiche, loose without being sloppy and inspirational without excessive brilliance, Crenshaw's repertoire — crisply worked through on his debut LP — has the sassy familiarity of a favourite jukebox and the knack of making a sharp new melody sound instantly recognisable.

"What I'm trying to do is come up with something that reflects my personal taste and present in a way that other people might enjoy. Music is like a medicine and a refuge to me, and since I use other music in that manner maybe that's what mine could be good for."

CRENSHAW WAS over for a single London appearance. A lean figure with large round glasses, a rough brush of hair and blandly unassuming features, he might be one of Robert Frost's stoic farmhands, polishing an apple and sniffing the sky for rain. A Ted Nugent T-shirt (an ironic gesture, I'm assured) rather undermines the impression. He talks with the slow, hesitant speech of a man surprised that his time might have come.

"Most American popular music that's left over from the '70s I can't stand, but if you listen you can hear that there's an '80s sound that's come around. Analysing that scene would take days because there's so many factors involved and interest that have to be served. I have to create my own reality out of by picking things out here and there — I can't listen solidly to any rock radio station at all.

"It's the deliberateness and self-consciousness that I dislike. It runs contrary to what should be good about the music. It communicates so much better when it's spontaneous and accidental sounding."

An illusion, of course, but Crenshaw has a magician's touch when it comes to making it work. In the breezy 'Cynical Girl' and 'There She Goes Again', the crackling swing of 'I'll Do Anything' and the celestial drapes of 'Girls' the devices of romantic pop suffer a fresh resurrection. The concept of feel is restored to American pop in an LP that sounds brash and unkempt by high-tech standards.

Even so, I don't think there's anything on it that's quite as outstanding as the delirious 'Something's Gonna Happen', an early demo released over here as a single by Albion.

"Yeah, well... I like the album but it doesn't really reflect what we do. I'll stand by it, but we won't repeat the process we went through to make it. It's hard to hear what's going on because there's so much overdubbing. We went through so much grief in getting it done that the major thing was just to get it finished. I find it distasteful making a record that way, trying to please so many people. I hope next time it'll be a lot different."

Marshall looks morose, and I find myself sympathising. He seems like a fan at heart, one who's already got his motives and talents almost too clearly in shape. He may find his direction a dilemma in itself. Already, at 28, a fully formed songwriter and performer, what else can he progress to? Will he be content with refining and polishing a craftsman's gift?

"I guess that's it, really. Just expand on it a little. I do have a problem in that I wrote on that first record stuff that's basic to me and stated it in as simple a way as possible. I did leave myself with almost nowhere else to go. Now I'll just close my eyes and jump — I like it that way. I like to have deadlines, see where the chips fall. That's what I'll do next.

"There's certain aspects of our sound that have yet to come across. We have the beat and I want that to be heard "

AND IT was made clear in a tremendous live set. Crenshaw's trio — himself on guitar, his brother Robert on drums and Robert Donato on bass— tore up his straight-flush sequence in a style that made three men sound like six. A rare and considerable pleasure to be reminded of the uncomplicated excitement of this unfashionable strain of pop after the customary gloom of our serious young men. This, more than ever, is music brought about in the fire of the moment — tenderness, humanity and abandon fusing in a single rush.

Even more encouraging is that Crenshaw is one American with an understanding of the single.

"That's what I buy — singles. When I listen to records at home I normally pick out a stack of singles. They're where it's at for me: a whole album takes so long to get through.

"My tastes were formed in the '60s. The radio I grew up on was where they'd play a James Brown record, followed by Petula Clark and Slim Harpo and then maybe a Herman's Hermits record. The diversity was so good, even with Burt Bacharach stuff. It's impossible for me to understand why people my age always put that down as crap. Singles aren't understood there now — except maybe the 12-inch things, the Sugarhill stuff. Maybe they'll emerge in a different form from the '60s. Album-orientated rock is dying off, it's just that it's taking a long time. I want to help speed it along."

How hard is it to avoid the use of mere mannerism in a music that could be nurtured on lick-stealing and songs-by-numbers?

"Sometimes I do just do a song by numbers," he admits. "Somewhere along the way there has to be something that comes up to transform it. I do actually sit down and write, grunt and groan something out. But it has to have a kind of spark to it or I reject it. I think I'm a good editor. You just have to feel what's right."

In all this celebration of honest virtues, Crenshaw could also be deemed a manifestation of an old-timer's nostalgia. I think his best music is tough and slippery enough to transcend such a tag, but the temptation to play to a gallery of new pop-haters must be hard to resist.

"Yeah, except that I don't think nostalgia's such a bad thing. It can be a really sweet feeling. I don't object to that as a response because we're getting through on so many levels. I've had letters from kids who are so young that they couldn't be nostalgic even if they wanted to. My favourite thing about the way we've broken through in the US is that there's no pattern to it. There's no identifiable group of people we're appealing to."

Better, at least, than that most notorious of sobriquets, the Critics' Favourite.

"Mmm. We've already felt a kinda backlash from starting out that way, with a lot of exposure in the press. After six months of rave press we got hostile reviews rooted in a devil's advocate viewpoint, the pendulum swinging back. I hope now we'll be judged without any particular stigma attached."

CRENSHAW'S LATE development, after maybe ten years of road work with pop and country groups, home recording and a stint with the touring show of Beatlemania, puts him in the uncommon position of starting out with a stack of experience and a dose of acquired cynicism. Does he think dues-paying is beneficial?

"I don't believe in any superiority system in pop music. People will say you can't do good on your first record — I don't buy that. If it's good to start with, then it's good. Rules don't work, preconceptions about a pop artist. Too much forethought won't fit.

"It's a career because it's the only thing I've ever done. I'm totally single-minded about what I do. If I worried about the quota I'm supposed to fulfil I wouldn't be able to go on. I'll just go ahead and work through it. There's a lot of pressure on me just now but I don't want my stuff to have to do with dependence. So I don't make long range projections. It's just one step at a time."

Forthright words. But should his rating as a performer fail, Crenshaw has the kind of composer's touch that suggests a one man Brill Building. With songs already covered by Robert Gordon, among others, it seems he has his pension secure.

"It's fun to give somebody a song and see what they do with it. Now, if I could get a song covered by Smokey Robinson... I idolise him. He's the closest thing I have to a hero because of all the people of his generation he's done more quality work than any of them. To just have written 'Don't Mess With Bill' by The Marvellettes would have earned him his place in history — but he's made a couple of hundred others on the same level!"

In this forever transitory movement, Marshall Crenshaw sits rather awkwardly, kindling the past and trying to light up the present. To lump him in with the usual thick-ear braggarts of American rock would be as great an error as consigning him to recycling graveyard flavours of beat group history.

In one sense, Crenshaw's American identity is irrelevant — if not timeless, his work is at least universal.

At this moment — perhaps at any moment — Crenshaw's pop is as skilful and enriching as any other, probably more uplifting than most. Its simple tug at memory's sleeve has a sincere appeal seldom encountered. If he comes up with a lot more, it'll be fine by me. I'll make space. I want to feel more of those dizzy shivers.

© Richard Cook 1982