Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

That's the only thread I think of when I think of him

i find B&C to be really good at least for the first half. second half is decent but I still dig "Uncomplicated" and "Tokyo Storm Warning" quite a bit

I can totally see someone calling "King of America" a dud, but "Blood & Chocolate" has way too much going for it. I want to say his first real dud, excluding "Goodbye Cruel World" (liners of the Ryko reissue begin something like "Congratulations, you've just bought my worst album!"), was "Mighty Like a Rose," and it's been erratic if not outright weird ever since.

Holy shit, this live German TV performance from 1978 is smoking hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQbQ2InHp44&feature=player_embedded

If nothing else, do yourself a favor and watch the performance of Lipstick Vogue @ 28:27.

So, I was listening to "Almost Blue" this morning, and as much fun as it is to give this guy shit these days, that album's really ahead of its time, isn't it? I mean, it was received as a lark, but really: a 1981 album by a Brit punk doing hardcore country - George Jones, Merle Haggard, even Gram Parsons - with a straight face, before a lot of that stuff became a hip signifier? This is pre-Mekons, pre-alt country, pre pop rediscovery of Parsons, etc. Not bad, Costello.

I never really got into that one. But Imperial Bedroom and Blood & Chocolate have impressed me a lot lately. I figure it's time to jump into his 90's work, for better or worse.

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4dfbaefe49e2ae2b75000000-480/swimming-nose-holding-underwater.jpg

I don't really like "Almost Blue" much, but I do think it was as massively ahead of its time as any ahead of its time record.

'90s Elvis: hodgepodge. It's like one long compilation.

it's easy to make a good playlist/CD-R of his nineties stuff; it's taking the time to do it though.

I like "Kinder Murder" a lot. I am skeptical though - when I saw him at Summerfest, his set was like 75% from the albums up to Imperial Bedroom, which kinda said a lot (intentionally or no)

Sulky Girl is a great EC 90s song. Brutal Youth is where I stopped listening, though. I did order his latest through an amazon.com vendor but that was 3 weeks ago and they have yet to deliver it, which says something...

I got up to All This Useless Beauty, probably his best since Blood & Chocolate, but I could never get into anything he did after that. There's something about his singing starting in the 90s that really puts me off, like he found a slick comfort zone that he rarely steps out of. I can't imagine present-day Elvis doing a whispery menacing vocal like "Beyond Belief."

Ironically, I just got an email that my order of National Ransom has been cancelled.

Starting with Spike, the problem with most of his albums is that they tend to be least 10 minute too long.

...or about 20 in the case of 'When I Was Cruel'

There's something about his singing starting in the 90s

'Twas voice lessons that killed the beast. I blame "The Juliet Letters."

or turned him into a beast

When did Elvis stop drinking? Given This Year's Model and the El Mocambo live album are what I return to most, I got this hunch that I started losing interest in the guy's career when he got sober.

Pretty sure it was around Imperial Bedroom.

I think speed was the drug of choice of most of his generation. All those songs and albums is so short a span, and I mean, you can really hear it at work on the live stuff.

I actually liked Almost Blue a lot the year it came out -- put it in a year-end top 10 I did for my college paper in 1981, which seems doubly nuts since Trust also came out that year, but I was apparently just starting to explore country at the time. (Also listed albums by Joe Ely, Rosanne Cash, and Merle Haggard.) I haven't listened to it in decades, but it did introduce me to songs and country artists I was only vaguely aware of before. Thing is, it probably wasn't that unheard-of a move for Costello, given that he'd basically graduated out of the U.K.'s pub-rock scene, which in a lot of ways was the roots-rock/alt-country of its time, at least where bands like Brinsley Schwarz were concerned. The Fabulous Poodles had already covered "Third Rate Romance" by Amazing Rhythm Aces, for instance, and Chilli Willi & the Red Hot Peppers did "Six Days On The Road" by Dave Dudley. (I only know because they're both on a CD compilation of '70s pub-rock I have.)

Otherwise, I pretty much stopped paying attention to Costello after Goodbye Cruel World -- so I didn't even make it through his first decade. Basically still love the first 3 albums; like a few of the other early albums okay, especially Trust and the B-sides compilation Taking Liberties, and can live without the rest. (Never liked Imperial Boredom much, even when it was new.)

Also worth remembering that he had already done a couple original straight country songs before Almost Blue -- "Stranger In The House" (duet on a George Jones album in 1979) and "Radio Sweetheart" (on Taking Liberties, so maybe a B-side in England? Something like that.)

I talked with Steve Earle once, and he said Elvis Costello was massively important to him and his friends in 1970's Texas.

'Twas voice lessons that killed the beast.

extremely otm. before he began to reinvent himself as a capital-S singer, he was a pretty great singer. but the harder he tries to "sing," the less i like. his penchant for straying howlingly off-key doesn't help.

http://www3.pictures.fp.zimbio.com/Welcome+Voice+Opera+Paris+xPuK_UEI7Ycl.jpg

90s Costello: All This Useless Beauty is actually one of my favourite of his records. One of his strongest sets of songs (check out "Little Atoms," "You Bowed Down," "Just About Glad" or the title track) and unusually concise for any record he made during the 80s onward. The super limited edition live record he put out of his accompanying tour with Steve Nieve in '97 or so is one of the few live records I care about.

Brutal Youth has "13 Steps Lead Down," which was actually my introduction to Costello! Hard to believe now that the local "alternative" station actually played it in between Nirvana and the Pumpkins and all that at the time. "This is Hell" is another favourite--his effete vision of Hell, where "'My Favourite Things' is playing again and again / but its by Julie Andrews and not by John Coltrane" is still one of the funniest lyrics I've ever heard. But yeah, otherwise the album is subject to the same bloat that makes a lot of his albums a bit of a chore to take in all at once (PaulTMA is otm upthread).

What else was there in the 90s? File The Juliet Letters and Kojak Variety under genre detours that Costello has a lot more passion than talent for. The Bacharach collaboration bored me to tears; thank HMV for still doing returns on opened product in the late 90s.

*"thank YOU HMV..."

Brutal Youth has "13 Steps Lead Down," which was actually my introduction to Costello! Hard to believe now that the local "alternative" station actually played it in between Nirvana and the Pumpkins and all that at the time.

Mine did too. That spring I discovered the Ryko reissues and took the plunge.

Brutal Youth retains MItchell Froom completely ditches the kitchen sink production from Mighty Like A Rose, going for a fairly grunge-friendly sound instead. First time I heard 13 Steps on the radio, at the end of a Costello BBC Scotland interview, I assumed they were playing the demo version.

Brutal Youth has lots of plinky plonky wonky skronky Froomy drum sounds, though

xpost "All This Useless Beauty" follows in the one long compilation scheme of the '90s, since it's a selection of songs he wrote for or with other people for other projects.

Brutal Youth is messy but man the good stuff on it is great, maybe the last one I can say that for (the only 2000s one that had any decent songs was Momofuku iirc? I don't think I've ever heard When I Was Cruel though)

The drum sound on BY is the #1 reason why I've never warmed to it. It's like Froom gated a pair of aluminum garbage cans.

When I Was Cruel is pretty good! I saw him play a club date around that album and he was awesome.

Nick Lowe plays bass on a hunk of "Brutal Youth." They should have had him produce.

I saw him on that tour for the first time. I still love the title track.

Telling quote from Pete Thomas:

How old were you when you started playing music? When did you get your first set of drums? What drew you to the instrument?

I was 9, my grandmother bought me a snare-drum and cymbal. I made the rest of the kit out of old oil drums and biscuit tins.

Thomas still calls it his trademark "biscuit tin snare" sound.

I've seen EC with the Attractions a couple of time, the Imposters a couple of times, Emmylou Harris once, and paired with Nieve maybe three times? They've all been pretty strong, though his catalog has become so deep and unwieldy choice paralysis leads him to play it safe. Then again, a few years back he started breaking out the spinning songbook again, so who knows?

http://spencerweddings.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/elvis-costello-1.jpg

Aside: Larry Sanders is the main reason I sifted through Costello's later stuff. I was beyond impressed with 13 Steps Lead Down and that acoustic version of Little Atoms.

While we're here, can we have yet another round of applause for the Attractions? What an amazing band. The playing, the arrangements, the cool ideas and personalities, paired with Costello's weird rock songs? Perfect.

Has this been posted anywhere yet? I haven't heard almost half of these but still found it quite an interesting order.

http://www.stereogum.com/1426582/elvis-costello-albums-from-worst-to-best/top-stories/lead-story/

Aside: Larry Sanders is the main reason I sifted through Costello's later stuff. I was beyond impressed with 13 Steps Lead Down and that acoustic version of Little Atoms.

It's funny to realize that there are more years beween Brutal Youth and now than Brutal Youth and My Aim Is true

the ATUB-era episode of Conan where EC was the only guest, with interview segments and multiple performances, was what really got me all set on picking up My Aim Is True and beginning to fall in love with his catalog.

EC with the Attractions might be one of my top 5 favorite rock quartets ever, just an incredible combination of personalities and instrumental styles.

love his cover of "Brilliant Disguise," recorded during this era.

Mighty Like A Rose being routinely singled out as his worst album is just sheer insanity

yeah, and North over Useless Beauty? feels like they're really working overtime to peg the 90s as his nadir.

Painted From Memory over When I Was Cruel is a truth bomb, though.

There's a lot of imprecision and overwroughtness in MLAR that only becomes apparent after you listen to the rest of the catalog. As the second album of his I bought -- the first one bought at the time of release -- I thought the sixteen guitars per track and crazed harmonies and toy pianos sounded glorious.

Mighty Like A Rose was practically the last old album I checked out. from my vantage point it's middling but better than its rep.

I'd put it "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" on the all-time list.

^^^ this. Best song on the record by far, and probably his best post-Blood and Chocolate vocal.