theme as "guilty suppression and confusion". A revision of an Imperial Bedroom outtake, "Inch By Inch" was described by Kristine McKenna of the Los Angeles Times as "a tale of love decaying into bitterness". With "sinister" organ, "smoky" saxophone, and a bass riff that mirrors the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" (1966), some reviewers on release compared it to 1977's "Watching the Detectives". Perone likens both "Room with No Number" and "Inch By Inch" 1980s pop sound to Culture Club. "Worthless Thing" is an attack on the media, particularly the perils of fame, celebrities and celebrity adornment. Swenson felt the song harkened back to the artist's angry persona of his early works. Costello himself described it as "self-loathing". Musically, Perone calls it one of the album's few "true rock" songs. "Love Field" is an atmospheric ballad that views love, in Swenson's words, as "a kind of suspended animation". Perone says it resembles a dreamscape. Costello felt it was one of the only songs not to have dated production. Side two Costello's cover of "I Wanna Be Loved" uses synthesisers that Perone believes takes away from the "soulful spirit" of the original. Swenson likened the sound to calypso music. "The Comedians" takes its title from a Graham Greene novel of the same name, although the song itself has little to do with the book. With a 5/4-time signature, the song revisits older themes to create a tale about the "emptiness of modern society". "Joe Porterhouse" is about "the funeral of a family strong man". The music and some of the lyrics came from "I Love You When You Sleep", a song Costello had written for Respond Records artist Tracie. Perone likens the 1960s pop rock sound to Ray Davies of the Kinks. "Sour Milk Cow Blues" is another of the album's few rock songs. Its hard to decipher lyrics tell of a narrator who weeps over his lover's abandonment of him. Gouldstone says the track continues the album's overall theme of "disjointed identity". "The Great Unknown" was intended for Robert Wyatt, who turned it down. It marked Costello's second songwriting collaboration with Langer following "Shipbuilding" the previous year. Discussing the song, Costello said in it, "infamous characters from celebrated songs have spiteful things done to them". Its unrelated verses all deal with forms of death, including gangsters, a Samson a Delilah story and the horrors of murder in the World Wars. Perone