Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

Me? I liked him for a very long time. But I'm not sure how much I do now. I'll have a think and get back to you.

1. Encountering him in 80s childhood: the almost capuccino-pop textures (I may be off the mark there) and heavy wordy satire of Punch The Clock seeped into me and made it my favourite EC LP for ever amen.

2. His eternal 'returns' and reinventions... come the end of the 80s I get mildly more clued up and start to work out how EC's career fits together, what he's been up to, what are the highs and lows... I decide, roughly, that he is pretty much a genius. People have said before that 'genius' is an unhelpful term, and I agree that it tells you little save that I admire EC. But what I mean is, a) I think he is the most accomplished lyricist in the history of pop over the last 40 or so years - at least amongst what I have heard. b) he is able to be comic and serious, elaborately tongue-in-cheek or straight-out sincere (but maybe I shouldn't exaggerate the range here - I'm not sure, I think there is an 'EC mode' somewhere). c) he is able to dip in and out of genres with rare distinction and understanding; he always shows huge (even excessive?) respect for the genres he uses. (This makes for a slight difference with Merritt, who clearly loves lots of the genres he essays but is still less 'respectful' towards them.) d) He has a rare melodic gift which gets rather eclipsed by his even rarer lyrical gift; he reminds me of McCartney, really. So, classic, classic, classic.

3. But hang on. I don't actually *listen* to EC that much. I have to admit that for all his brilliance, he's not always what I want to hear. Possibly there's a certain lack of... 'lightness' in his work - he's so 'full-on' about everything that I can't quite see him pulling off the nonchalant grace of, say, 'Ask', 'Here's Where The Story Ends' or 'The Saddest Story Ever Told'.

4. Then again - his 1998 collaboration with Bacharach, Painted From Memory, seems to me magnificent. Lyrical simplicity yet point; fabulous melodic dynamism; lush arrangements. From my particular POV, one of the most vital records of the last 10 years, and a great highlight of EC's entire career. In the end, I can only admire this fellow.

I'll have to combine this with the 'records never played' answer. Somehow I have a near complete EC collection and I've never listened to any of it!

My favorite quote about him came from Bernard Sumner, god among men:

Interviewer: "What do you think of wordsmiths like Elvis Costello?"

Sumner: *deep breath* "Don't talk to me about that overrated fucking jerk."

Genius.

Heh.

Ned - it must be really cool to have a complete collection of records by people you dislike.

I wouldn't mind looking like Beck, or even Elvis Costello, but I guess that just proves David Lee Roth's point - but I'm not a critic, so maybe it's OK.

I find Sumner's voice far more compelling than EC's; like Ned, lyrics to me are not the be-all-end-all qualification for "good vocals." (Even though I'd take Sumner's lyrics over EC's...) But I can see why people like EC; he does have a knack for a hook (but so does Sumner--no pun intended ;-)--but I must say, I have two of his records, and I hardly listen to them, ever.

Dylan I like, though. He sounds quite fragile ("Har-har-har, that's 'cause he can't sing in tune!" NOT FUNNY, CLICHE-WIELDING ASSHOLES!), as opposed to EC, who comes across to me as pretty smug a lot of the time. Of course, Bright Eyes sounds fragile, and I don't know if I could name one vocalist whose teeth I'd rather kick in...

My Aim Is True is a great record that took me a long time to get into. In fact, it's one of my favourites, despite the pub-rock backing group. I always thought they were the perfect band for the 50s Punk Buddy Holly thing he was being marketed as at the time. The lyrics are great, too: "now that your picture's in the paper / being rhythmically admired"? Brilliance. I haven't listened to any of his other stuff except "Pump It Up" and "I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea" and "Veronica" and they're all good too. Hey Ned, how much for the collection?

that said, he's not luther vandross and when he sings out of his range, it's at best endearing, at worst really, really, really bad.

i like e.c. because he's got a lot of pop smarts, see for example his nicks of everyone from abba to stax. i can listen to him rather than, say, dylan because not only does he have fine lyrics but he takes an active interest in the recording process and is an underrated melodist.

Thanks Josh

Back to Marty Costello, I actually think the Scorsese comparison is pretty apt. They're both in a sense technical savants with really identifiable personal trademarks, with a "core" catalog buffered by several conspicuously stylistic deviations over the years that nonetheless below the surface fit right in. I'd say, with minimal thought, that "Gangs of New York" may be his "Mighty Like a Rose."

Thanks Josh. If you ever sit through Scorsese's commentaries and old DVD extras (particularly for Raging Bull or Taxi Driver), what's extraordinary (yes, extraordinary) is how he applies his encyclopedic knowledge of film history to the way he crafts every scene. He references a wide array of films that on the surface don't have much in common with one another, and what he comes up with doesn't feel like a patchwork collage - it's seamless and organic, you don't mistake it for anything but a Scorsese film. One boxing scene was heavily modeled on the shower scene in Psycho, Jake and Vicki's first encounter on a scene between Terry and Edie in On the Waterfront, etc. None of this is obvious when you watch the movie, but it's clear when they point it out to you and put them up side-by-side or throw up a storyboard next to a scene.

When EC wrote the liner notes for those Rhino reissues, at least for some of the earlier albums he goes track-by-track listing every element from every record they stole. Get Happy!! always made its sources obvious, that was part of the concept, but on Armed Forces, he's listing everything from ABBA to David Bowie's Eno collaborations, Bacharach/David songs like "Anyone Who Had a Heart," etc. and it goes on and on like that. Again, it doesn't feel like a patchwork collage of other records thrown together, it's seamless and organic and you don't mistake it for anything but an Elvis Costello record. But when he points out the sources, the connection becomes clear. It's like that cynical axiom that says all art is theft and that the best artists know how to obscure that thievery more skillfully than others.

I was taken aback by mookie's response which to be blunt was garbage, but if he wants to live down to that, good luck to him.

I like your theory, birdistheword !

I quite like the idea of an artist who draws so deliberately on another thing, but not just by directly (maybe lazily) quoting it, rather by using it as inspiration for a creative act that has its own intensity or complexity.

Thanks pinefox! I remember David Byrne did a radio interview around 1999 or 2000 where they asked him about artists he or Talking Heads had influenced, and he kind of mentioned what you just said - he had a greater appreciation for those who didn't sound like his work. He liked inspiring artists to take similar risks, but the result really had to be their own rather than mimic or re-create something he or Talking Heads had already done.

I've listened to Clockface - I liked it the for the first six tracks, but it kind of falls apart after that, with experiments that don't work and soft-jazz ballads that are hit-or-miss (and even then the performances of those ballads may be an acquired taste - I'm not really a fan of his wife's music, but those songs feel like they'd fit better on her albums).

Wait, is this a new EC LP again ??

It is! Crikey!

What about LOOK NOW?

I have still not heard that but think I might like it.

I thought Look Now was okay. Greil Marcus described it as "12 songs baked in a cake" in his dismissive review, and to be fair that's a good description for how it sounds.

I liked "Under Lime," "Unwanted Number" and "Mr. & Mrs. Hush," they were immediately engaging. ("Unwanted Number" is actually an old song - it was written in 1995 or 1996 for Grace of My Heart as a fictional '60s hit, and it fits very well with Look Now. This may be the first time he's recorded it himself, barring any circulating demos.)

"Suspect My Tears" was pretty good too, albeit a little overdone for my taste. I'm not a huge fan of "Stripping Paper" but quite a few people seem to believe it's one of the highlights.

Marcus actually preferred the four-song EP that came with the expanded edition. (It's all streaming on Spotify.) He singled out “The Final Mrs. Curtain" and I have to agree, it's an excellent track that should have been on the album proper.

(Forgot, "Unwanted Number" was also performed on the All This Useless Beauty tour, albeit re-arranged as a dirge.)

Is 'Unwanted Number' in the film? If so I really liked it.

Surprised at how prolific EC is being, again.

The SPIKE demos (CD2?) are not on Spotify.

I finally played '... this town ...' again last night. Remarkable. The lyric is finally too obscene for me, but the music - I'd not realised wuite how powerful, pervasive and creative Roger McGuinn was on this track. It's curious that he only ever played on *one* EC track - so superbly - but never again.

Speaking of which, I had no idea untucks today that he made a video for "This Town", and I was paying attention at the time. If I had seen it I might have recognised the references to Donald Trump, I wonder if I'd heard of him back then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXzkG4LK9gY

Tim: yes, I saw this the other day and my thoughts were precisely the same!

I'd not realised wuite how powerful, pervasive and creative Roger McGuinn was on this track. It's curious that he only ever played on *one* EC track - so superbly - but never again.

Well, "You Bowed Down" isn't McGuinn but also kind of IS McGuinn.

As luck would have it, someone uploaded the clip on YouTube (albeit squashed):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPcoREKDW30

The R&B group For Real is credited with performing (or at least singing) the film recording. It's also on the out-of-print 1998 compilation Bespoke Songs, Lost Dogs, Detours & Rendezvous that Rhino put together before they licensed his back catalog. Not a bad compilation.

The deluxe edition of Look Now is on Spotify, but yes, the Rhino bonus discs (covering everything up to and including All This Useless Beauty) are all out-of-circulation. Elvis Costello's talked about this in interviews because he considers each of those bonus discs to be an album in its own right. Unfortunately, their availability seems to be out of his hands, so it probably has something to do with his deal with Universal. No idea what, it could be a lot of things: maybe Universal has the final say on whether to make them available, maybe they don't but the release for that material is tied up by some disagreement between both parties (or maybe even with Rhino/WEA), who knows.

FWIW, "You Bowed Down" was originally written for McGuinn, and it's on his album Back from Rio. It's been mentioned in several places (probably the Rhino liner notes too), but EC re-recorded it for All This Useless Beauty because he didn't believe they recorded it quite right. (The producer for Back from Rio didn't see eye-to-eye with McGuinn and he even tried to bury his 12-string in the mix before McGuinn objected.) EC's version sounds even more like a note-perfect re-creation of the Byrds (specifically 1965).

Thanks, bird, for more of the story on "You Bowed Down." A high quality song.

I love Bespoke Songs..., though my CD got scratched at some point and now won't play correctly. Loads of great stuff - Aimee Mann, Zucchero, Don Was, Christy Moore.

Back In Rio is a really good album!!!

and it’s version of “you bow down” is better than the one on ATUB

its

imo

(The producer for Back from Rio didn't see eye-to-eye with McGuinn and he even tried to bury his 12-string in the mix before McGuinn objected.) EC's version sounds even more like a note-perfect re-creation of the Byrds (specifically 1965).

A fraught album, apparently. In the Tom Petty doc, Bogdanovich includes a clip of Tom Petty arguing for the exclusion of what Petty calls a terrible pop song while the young producer smiles assholeishly and McGuinn looks chagrined.

that was an awkward moment

Who is responsible for the graphic design on the last couple of EC albums? My god.

The producer for Back from Rio didn't see eye-to-eye with McGuinn and he even tried to bury his 12-string in the mix

This really is like 'Elvis Costello's producer tried to persuade him to make it an instrumental LP', or 'Larry Adler's manager said it mostly sounded fine, but Larry should ditch the harmonica'.

BACK FROM RIO is a terrific LP. 'You Bowed Down' is one of the best things on it, and I think EC sings bvs on it.

I'm not sure I prefer the USELESS BEAUTY version - it has a wonderful epic scale (especially intro and outro), but it actually misses out some of the chords (and adds an odd slow bridge), and changes some of the words as I recall. And I suppose on that song I'd rather hear McGuinn's lead vocal.

Are they as bad as Beautiful South covers?
xp

What made you think of Larry Adler, the pinefox?

Like "Jim" McGuinn, he was closely associated with a particular instrument !!!

McGuinn sounds weedy on the Rio version.

Cool, teh pinefox. I met one of his relatives a few times.

Larry Adler

The name Larry Adler puts me in mind of Simon & Garfunkel's "A Simple Desultory Phillippic"

I been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored...
I been Phil Spectored, resurrected
I've been Lou Adlered, Barry Sadlered

Lol

pinefox otm, ec kinda fucks up the hook on his version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHlJS9FJxyc

Probably my favorite country cover from Elvis. (A Leon Payne song, Eddie Noack's version is probably the best-known recording.)

The timecode doesn't carry over, but the song's at 29:13

First, this is fun:

https://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/elvis-costello-on-the-music-of-his-life/

Second, I find it fascinating that EC had such a fruitful but fleeting career moonlighting as a producer. Squeeze's "East Side Story" (plus "Tempted"), the Pogues' "Rum, Sodomy & the Lash," and the first Specials album (plus, later, "Free Nelson Mandela"). And I just found out he produced the first demo of "Fairytale of New York":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsenFnCMi2o

But he never really produced anything ever again, not past 1985, afaict.

apparently Elektra pushed hard for him to produce Apollo 18 by They Might be Giants but TMBG themselves were such big Costello fans that they refused, not wanting to "waste" his time. I still wonder what that might've sounded like.

From that interview, btw:

PJ Harvey: 4-Track Demos
I remember seeing PJ on The Tonight Show. She stood there with just a guitar and did “Rid of Me.” It was like seeing Howlin’ Wolf on Shindig! So great. And then I got the record (Rid of Me), and it was nowhere near as good, but it didn’t matter. For me, the record sounds like shit. That guy (Steve Albini) doesn’t know anything about production. He might be the second-worst producer of a great record after Jimmy Iovine, who totally fucked up (Bruce Springsteen’s) Darkness on the Edge of Town. It sounds like Bruce is in a fucking shoe box full of tissue paper.

He's right about Darkness, wrong about Albini...but then, he loves Froom, so I guess that's not a surprising take.

(And Albini would no doubt agree that he doesn't know anything about production, since he always points out that he's an engineer, not a producer.)

Hmm, I don't mind Albini, but given part of his deal is capturing what a band sounds like live, yet "Rid of Me" is nowhere near as good as that band was live (imo), does indicate a bad match (even if it was a bad match of her choosing). The rest of the EC quote (which I accidentally excised) sums it up for him thusly:

And that’s why 4-Track Demos is 20 times the version of the songs on the album, in terms of intensity and intent. What matters is her, what PJ is doing. There’s nobody like her.

That is to say, the production, like it or not (and sometimes I don't mind it), is every bit a distraction as Froom filigrees can be, imo.

I love 4-Track Demos, but weirdly never thought of comparing it to Rid Of Me -- they seem like such different records. I always loved the sound of Rid Of Me, and I think (one of) the fundamental difference(s) between Froom and Albini is that Albini's approach exploits the drama. Froom feels like he's forcing the drama...or just trying to force something to happen that can't or won't or shouldn't happen.

The one time I saw PJ Harvey, in the summer of '93, they had supposedly decided to break up earlier in the tour, but needed to finish out the dates. They seemed remote from one another, and while it was a fine enough show, it didn't make me think Rid Of Me was unrepresentative of their sound.

iovine just engineered darkness, right? i mean, he's partly responsible for the sound, but the ultimate credit/blame would have to be with the boss himself (and landau, I suppose).

Yeah, and didn't Iovine kind of give up partway through and Chuck Plotkin had to come in and help? Or am I making that up?

Yep, Iovine was the engineer. In 1977-78, though, it was apparently impossible to find a studio in the US with any kind of resonance. Everything had carpeted walls -- Greil Marcus called it "the muffled flumpf of L.A. studio drummers." Not sure why Landau/Iovine didn't add reverb from whatever outboard gear was around at the time, but Bruce was pretty exacting, if not always clear, about how he wanted things to sound.

Plotkin did some (all?) mixing on Darkness.

i love that dead 70s drum sound

reverb is for cowards

Maybe Elvis Costello and Steve Albini can patch things up over a beer and saying the N-word

ums otm

ultimate credit/blame would have to be with the boss himself

This is pretty much always true, whether the boss is the Boss or Metallica or whomever. "Rid of Me" sounds like it does because that's what PJ wanted, for better or for worse. The sound is definitely part of the album's character, however.

Re: Froom, I think the culprit (if one is even needed) may actually be Tchad Blake, who is (even) more quirky and idiosyncratic than Froom. Blake produced Soul Coughing solo, for example, which leans into that stuff hard. But Froom's production on those first few Ron Sexsmith albums is pretty sympathetic and subdued. Regardless, Froom's stuff, like Albini's (as he will be the first to say), isn't exactly being imposed. Folks go to Froom for Froom, just as others go to Albini, whose metier probably allows for a greater range of productions than Froom's, come to think of it. For point of comparison, I suppose, Low might be the only group that has gone with both approaches. Well, Tchad Blake and Albini, respectively.

reverb helps cowards feel strong and brave

I mean, if you don't think the drums sound good on Rumours (to use the most obvious example) then I just am not sure what is up with your ears

xpost That and double tracking vocals!

Fleetwood Mac drums sound ace. Much better than the marshmallow drums that came a decade later, like the drums on Bryan Adams' "Heaven." Boooooooooooooosh!

Fun fact: Stewart Copeland apparently cranked his drums (especially his snare) so tight that they had to spend a whole bunch of time adding effects to make them sound deeper and more resonant.