best Elvis Costello album of the '80s

but basically i could easily just get by on the first three elvis records and not really care too much about the others

Yeah I sort of feel like this most days to be honest - those first two especially are really great records though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

but basically i could easily just get by on the first three elvis records and not really care too much about the others

Yeah I sort of feel like this most days to be honest - those first two especially are really great records though.

I hear this all the time. But tbh, I could easily get by without My Aim Is True, and I listen to When I Was Cruel, All This Useless Beauty and Brutal Youth - not to mention most of these 80s albums - more than Armed Forces. Not saying they're better, but my solar system includes post-70s EC.

yeah i think even among the completist diehards it's tough to find anyone whose 2 or 3 favorite EC records aren't some combination of Aim/Model/Armed, but i think there's still a lot to like and love in the 20-something records that followed, spotty as they usually are. i kinda wanna do 90s and 00s polls too, but i feel like they'd be a lot less lively than even this one. maybe one post-80s poll?

One post-80s poll should do fine. Much tougher competition between Brutal Youth and When I Was Cruel than between the latter and, say, Momofuku. I'm a hardcore EC-ophile and even I haven't bought the last few records.

EC has recorded three records in the time it took me to type this sentence.

it's funny how in just this list of records you can see his productivity finally start to slow down -- 6 albums in the first half of the decade and 3 in the second

Trust by a mile.

― kornrulez6969, Friday, January 29, 2010 10:54 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

1. Get Happy!! (by a whisker)
2. Trust (by an even smaller whisker)
3. Imperial Bedroom
4. Blood and Chocolate
5. King of America
...the rest

Trust, then B&C, then KoA, then GH!!, then Boredom.

I played PTC the most at the time, but my vote would be GH followed by GCW.

I know.... just I saw EC&A, with the Pogues in support (5 hour gig!) and it was all fairly amazing. So, I can hear the songs that GCW were supposed to be.

Imperial Bedroom, Blood and Chocolate, Get Happy!!, Trust, King of America (predominantly for Suit of Lights), Spike (about which I remember nothing other than God's Comic and Veronica), everything else, which even during my most obsessive phase (about a six month period when I was seventeen and consumed pretty much everything, including all the nineties records and everything up through The Delivery Man) I never really got through.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

not surprising, I guess...it's interesting to me how Trust seems super well regarded, both around here and more or less in general, but when I was in high school and getting into EC I never got any impression of it being essential...I bought the first 4 albums in order, but after that started skipping forward to various late 80s/90s releases and didn't hear Trust until much more recently (the generic title and lousy cover art probably didn't help), so it's still kinda growing on me.

thought Trust was average - Get Happy much more off the cuff (more immediate) - but perhaps that means it doesn't wear well for some - for me it's his 3rd best record --

None of Trust's singles were big or characteristically Costello like "Pump It Up" or "Accidents Will Happen," and the album is often a frustrating miscellany (I have no time for "Lovers Walk" or "Luxembourg"), but I like the crumbling of the Costello edifice on tracks that on first listen sound like retreads: "Different Finger," "White Knuckles," "Watch Your Step." The music is guarded and tight, his vocals still surly, as he admits to even darker shit that the lacquered tunes of Trust's predecessors hid.

generic title and lousy cover art

i love both the title -- "trust" being both an essential elvis subject and a potential double entendre -- and the album art, including but not limited to the cover shot.

I think Trust was the first Costello album I really loved -- "Lover's Walk," "Clubland", "New Lace Sleeves," "Strict Time" ... those are some of my fave Costello songs of all time ....

Side 1 of Trust is the peak of his career

His best singing, their best playing. No contest.

i listened to imperial bedroom last night and still feel confident in my vote...that album is so crazy, so poncey

"man out of time" is just lovely....beyond belief, so many good songs

yeah, i mean i look at this list of albums and think the dude had a pretty fucking good 80s! Nine albums and not a bad once in the bunch -- Goodbye Cruel World come the closest to being bad, but as I said upthread, it's not that bad, maybe just bad by Costello's standards at the time ... Glad someone voted for Almost Blue -- I think that's a nice record.

not a bad *one*

Goodbye Cruel World is bad, full stop.

and it's not the only one.

i can't believe trust won this over get happy or blood and chocolate (or king of america for that matter)

haha, ok maybe it's bad ...

GCW really IS a jump-the-shark moment insofar as even the good songs are nothing you haven't heard before, arranged as if he didn't give a damn.

it took a little while for KoA to sink in for me, but i'm surprised it's not more highly regarded. not a duff cut on it.
i'm surprised trust won, in my short time e-here on ilm, it seems rare to me that the best album wins a poll. not taking taste into account, it seems there are usu. other considerations(i.e.being anti-canonical for the sake of it) people make when voting.

what exactly happened w/ Goodbye Cruel World anyway, I read that he 'announced his retirement' before the album was even released and obviously took a couple years before releasing the next album, but it seems like everything about it was designed for failure before it was even out, even with it coming on the heels of one of his biggest singles.

It was an odd situation:

That gig I mentiones, he announced his new single "I hope you're happy now" and that they were going into the studio that weekend to record it.

It didn't appear, and wasn't a single, until GCW a year later.

By then, most of the tracks were credited to Declan Patrick Alouicious McManus, apart from a couple which were to Elvis COstello.

I'm guessing 'personal issues'

xxpost

The duff cut on King of America is the cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." That's a really really unpleasant-to-listen-to vocal, to my ears, and instrumentally I don't think it's a winner, either.

one of that record's rare enjoyable moments imo

Oh, I nearly forgot.

I went into London for the grand opening of Tower Records' midnight release of "Spike, the beloved entertainer" and got mine signed by the man himself (and exchanged a few words)..

We were all queued up Regent Street, when Elvis and Nick Lowe crossed the street while strumming "Leave my kitten alone" and some other song I forget just now (I think it was his single at the time).

Loads of press photos were taken, and I was right at Elvis' left side, but when the photos were in the paper, I was cropped out. So was Nick Lowe, so hey.

listening to Get Happy!!...man, this record is tops, the bass is ridiculous, kinda can't believe I didn't vote for it but I'm glad I went with my instinct that B&C needed it more.

i think part of what weirds me out about Trust is it's one of his only albums from that period that has no 'theme' or genre pastiche going on, it's just the Attractions at the top of their game doing a new wave album. in the liner notes EC almost sounds embarrassed about parts of songs being inspired by contemporaries like the Pretenders or the Police instead of old Bacharach/George Jones/Motown records or whatever.

probably a bit harsh on king of america. but the opening line of that record presents the most horrible evidence that the album you are about to listen to has ambitions that exceed its grasp. i think the divide between ppl who like 'get happy' and ppl who like 'trust' is whether they value er conceptual thoroughness above thoroughness of craft maybe? like there'd be, probably, a similar thing if we did his worst record, between ppl whose least favorite is a lazy attractions retread and whose least favorite is a poor concept

think the divide between ppl who like 'get happy' and ppl who like 'trust' is whether they value er conceptual thoroughness above thoroughness of craft maybe?

Why are the two mutually exclusive? EC has always collapsed the two.

I like Get Happy!. My rankings:

Trust
Get Happy
King of America
Blood & Chocolate
the rest

From a 2002 RS interview:

Q: My favorite album is Trust. I never convince anyone to agree with me.

A: Oh, that's a good record. I think it has one of the greatest Attractions performances, "New Lace Sleeves." Neil LaBute, who's making a film at the moment, wants to use "Lovers Walk."

always liked this video - helped me appreciate his cover:
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2016579/v2140616

maybe it was just growing up reading the LA Times - E.C. was second only to Springsteen in Hilburn's canon - but it seemed to me like Imperial Bedroom, at the time, was being lauded as The Masterpiece

I'm a Taking Liberties fan myself

x-post
that's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by the way

probably a bit harsh on king of america...has ambitions that exceed its grasp

this is a minority view but one I concur w/. giving this alb a mixed-to-neg review when it came out nearly got me drummed out of the guild.

KOA's great songs have for a long time carried the weight of its dross, on which everyone seems to agree ("Glitter Gulch," "The Poisoned Rose," "Eisenhower Blues," the Animals cover).

"Stalin Malone" they didn't even bother to sing the words over the tune!

I listened to both KOA and IB last week and while they both have songs I love (mainly "I'll Wear It Proudly" and "Beyond Belief") they both have a lot problems for me and I'm glad to see them right in the middle of these poll results.

The duff cut on King of America is the cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood."

there's a live solo version of this on some promo that is pretty awesome

Is that the one where they all sing the riff? I remember hearing that on the radio a long, long time ago.

it took a little while for KoA to sink in for me, but i'm surprised it's not more highly regarded. not a duff cut on it. Falts. About half duff, to my ears. Lord Sotosyn nails it above, I think. As a huge wanking EC fanboy, I'm always amazed how very much people's mileage varies with him. I'm all, "wottayamean you don't like 'Battered Old Bird'?!" and am an Imperial Breadloom fan and have never fallen heels-up for Trust. YMMV, indeed.

Elvis Costello and The Attractions - Punch the Clock (1983) 2

a seriously underrated album -- his last great one, i think (in all seriousness, no challops).

i still would've voted for get happy!!, though.