best post-'80s Elvis Costello album

Of the ones I've heard:

Elvis Costello - Mighty Like A Rose (1991)
Elvis Costello - Brutal Youth (1994)
Elvis Costello - Kojak Variety (1995)
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - All This Uselss Beauty (1996)
Elvis Costello and The Imposters - When I Was Cruel (2002)
Elvis Costello and The Imposters - The Delivery Man (2004)

I went for this:

Elvis Costello and the Attractions - All This Uselss Beauty (1996)

ha, never even heard of some of these, let alone heard them. Is the Frisell thing any good? Going off of the ones I've heard ... ummm maybe When I Was Cruel?

All This Useless Beauty has some great, great songs on it, but also some pretty cruddy stuff.

of the ones I've heard:

Painted From Memory > All This Useless Beauty > The Delivery Man > Brutal Youth > When I Was Cruel > Sugarcane > Momofuku > Cruel Smile

i've been thinking about checking out Mighty and/or Kojak since they've become available on eMusic, is either really worth a listen?

pretty much all of these have a combination of great and cruddy imo. listened to When I Was Cruel for the first time in years recently and man oh man does the crud outweigh "45."

ATUB had a truly bizarre sequence of 'one every 2 weeks" CD singles.

huh, i remember thinking cruel was a "return to form" but i haven't listened in ages...

i did see him on that tour and man they were playing awesome at that time.

I stopped buying new ones after 2002. My rankings:

When I Was Cruel
All This Useless Beauty
Painted From Memory

I loved Mighty Like the Rose in '91, the first Costello I bought at the time of its release; "Couldn't Call It Unexpected #4" and "After the Fall" would make love song tapes for years.

Brutal Youth has awful, awful production.

well, i think it was more of a "i haven't done an album with a rock band in 6 years, did you miss me?" thing than an actual return to form. but yeah that tour was good, although the best EC show i've seen was a few years ago when he didn't have a new album to promote and just did an amazing hit-filled club set with the Imposters.

Brutal Youth's goofy Froom-isms sure do fit badly on some songs, but there are a couple tracks where it works perfectly imo

MLAR's impenetrability was part of its charm. Funny how tastes changes.

The Costello & Nieve set is by far the best thing from this period, and the only one I listen to with any regularity or lack of trepidation. On this list, my favorite would be the short Bill Frisell set. I love that version of "Baby Plays Around," as well as "Weird Nightmare" from the Mingus tribute.

dang, i need that Costello/Nieve thing. I remember some TV show of them (Storytellers?) that was phenomenal.

I could be wrong, but is Costello's cover of "Brilliant Disguise" from the same period?

yeah i love the Storytellers and other TV appearances from that period, have always wanted to hear the Costello & Nieve thing. but i decided not to include any live albums, especially ones with a good amount of pre-'90s material on them.

is that set available to buy or do I have to seek it out by nefarious means?

guess it's out of print, but available through amazon sellers: http://www.amazon.com/Costello-Nieve-Ltd-Live-5-disc/dp/B000002NCJ

Ebay has it anything between £13 to £25 on completed auction.

(there's one running at £6 now)

only one of these I've heard all of was when I was cruel and to me it was a severe case of "don't believe the hype." doll revolution was good but man was there a lot of phoned-in stuff. kojak variety is a classic e.c. title, anyway

I don't know if phoned-in would be my criticism of that (or most EC albums, really) -- he tends to be really committed to even his worst ideas.

Brutal Youth, Useless and Rose all have a few under-appreciated killer tunes, like "Unexpected No. 4," "You Tripped At Every Step," and I've always had a soft spot for "Shallow Grave." (Well, it's short, anyway.) Plus, a few good b-sides from the era, like "My Dark Life," "Life Shrinks," and the Wendy James demos.

I've found his vocals close-to unlistenable from When I Was Cruel onwards, although Momofuku is tolerable. Also, his guitar playing is seriously ugly.

yeah his vocals have gotten worse as he's gotten more ambitious about them -- i think The Delivery Man is pretty good, though, need to listen to it this week to confirm my impression of it as being the best of the last decade

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Brutal Youth" is a fantastic album that is one of this best and really in a league of its own here. "London's Brilliant Parade" is absolutely awesome, and his best moment after "Shipbuilding".

Brutal Youth has awful, awful production.

"Brutal Youth" has gorgeous production. The best production on any Elvis Costello album.

My gf contends that WIWC is his best album. I think she's nuts, but since I haven't heard most of these, I'll vote for that on her behalf.

I hate to agree with Geir about anything, but I love the production on Brutal Youth, as well as the songs. His strongest post-Blood & Chocolate set, I think.

Considering throwing a sympathy vote to When I Was Cruel, which I thought at the time was absolutely marvy, and as I recall has only one serious dud on it ("My Little Blue Window": sounds like he needed an "Elvis Costello song" to pad out an album of departures and weirdness). Also think Mighty Like a Rose is underappreciated, though there are some heinous stinkers on it ("Hurry Down Doomsday", "Broken"). The Costello & Nieve set might take this if it hadn't been a promo-only release; it really made me appreciate the awesomeness of All This Uselees Beauty, which is a nostalgic favourite. For me, the shark-jumping moment was North, and nothing after it has stuck with me for a minute.

Might have to relisten to some of this.

Fuck it, I'm going Brutal Youth. "WHAT IS YOUR DESTINY?"

"Mighty Like a Rose" IMO showed the potential of Costello/Froom that wasn't really fulfilled until "Brutal Youth". Loved the singles though, particularly "So Like Candy".

As for his recent Deutche Grammofon albums, I guess I'll file them together with Il Divo and Josh Groban......

I'm certain Costello & Nieve saw commercial release after originally being promos only.

Juliet Letters is fucking great, but no one else ever seems to think so

When I Was Cruel for me. Wonder if anyone at all is going to vote for El Songo...?

I think there's a general apprehension about his non-rock collaborative albums, but if I was going to pick up any of them it'd probably be Juliet Letters.

as I said upthread, Costello & Nieve was tossed out of the running for being live and full of pre-'90s compositions, not because of promo or limited edition status.

i think part of it is im going to listen to his rocking stuff i might as well listen to any of the earlier albums, why settle for anything from this period? altho the creeping Krallisms in the later period stuff is just ugghghghhhhh

burt bacharach collab is by far the worst thing on this list tho

you LIE

like honestly even if you don't dig on that album it excels at its particular niche and there are at least a half dozen failed experiments and bloated indulgences that it's not nearly as bad as

as I said upthread, Costello & Nieve was tossed out of the running for being live and full of pre-'90s compositions, not because of promo or limited edition status.

But you left in the Bill Frisell Deep Dead Blue collaboration - a live recording of primarily old songs and covers.

well that's me fucking up and not knowing much about that record tbh

Fair enough!

I'm not always a fan of his production (including 70s and 80s, tbh), so the live recordings are my first pick when I'm in a Costello mood.

haha just spotted this on another thread on new answers, perfect regurgitation of the horseshit comeback narrative of WIWC:

oseph cotten (joseph cotten) wrote this on thread Are there any artist(s) who, many years after the quality of their work had dwindled or halted altogether, actually came back and released another significant album? on board I Love Music on Nov 4, 2005

Elvis Costello, with "When I Was Cruel," after about 18-20 years of experiments in genteel tedium.

AFAIC, the best Costello of any vintage is this year's Live at Hollywood High. The Attractions are smokin'.

listening to Momofuku, not as bad as I remember it, the band sounds great and relaxed, but it's still probably the slightest set of songs he ever recorded with Nieve & Thomas

finally checked out Mighty Like A Rose and it's pretty nice, definitely one of the better albums on the list, I think the title/cover art just made it seem so boring that I avoided it for a long time.

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

ok so now i dont feel so alone! also, "15 petals" from WIWC is a really great song.

Didn't see this poll. Brutal Youth, All This Useless Beauty and Momofuku are the best ones.

Man, The Juliet Letters just about turned me off EC for good! Sounded (to my young ears) like a Kronos Quartet record played backwards while somebody shouted a Harold Pinter play at it.

Listening to WIWC right now for the first time in some years. Gah! There's something of Imperial Bedroom's kitchen-sink experimentalism about it, I think. Maybe not coincidental that it's also evidently a post-breakup album. I usually maintain that Bruce Thomas is among the best of rock bassists, but the cat he's got impostering for Thomas is mucho wicked on this. Seemed to herald a new era of something-being-at-stake in his work

Then he hooked up with Krall and all that promise was rendered useless.

OK, done: what a great record! Among his best, I think. I'd vote "Alibi" off the island - I really hate it (and had forgotten how much). The chorus is pretty nifty, but the verses with the repeated "Alibi, alibi" refrain are awful, and the whole thing builds to a really lame punchline undeserving of the venom w/which it's spit: "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW" ick. "My Little Blue Window" is actually a great little song, but it doesn't belong here - it could have been his most best-loved B-side instead. "Dissolve"'s a little dull. Otherwise: I hope he breaks up with Krall soon so we can have just one more venomous monolith like this from him.

haha i was just about to bring up "Alibi" as one of the (several) rancid dogs that makes WIWC undeserving of the votes it got. but then, i'm generally ill at ease with his sprawling 15 songs kitchen sink records, i prefer when he's got a more cohesive sound or concept to hang everything on.

i feel like your characterization of his Krall years is based entirely on North, though, Delivery Man rocks pretty hard at times.

Some sensible lurkers.

he may be the greatest songwriter since Dylan

I can't think of a way I could agree with this proposition but I am wondering when you take "Dylan" to be to make this work for yourself?

I'm not sure I completely understand what you mean by "when" as there's no exact point in time, partly because Dylan is still active.

"Best songwriter since X" requires X to be a point in time or a period, I think, especially if X is a living person?

I suppose really I'm trying to judge quite how highly you're rating EC. Greater than Lennon and McCartney?

I don't think the expression should be taken entirely that way. Obviously there's a time when X becomes established or starts producing relevant or notable work, but that work presumably continues, and even if X becomes less active or consistent, the well doesn't necessarily runs dry of notable work. So everything commendable by X to date is fair game, and any comparison applies to anyone who makes a name for themselves after X does

Lennon/McCartney doesn't really fit in the conversation well because it's the songwriting of two distinct writers. Though there is a measure of collaboration and both influenced the other (and evaluated each others work), it was never really a partnership the way traditional partnerships worked.

Haha yeah alright mate I was just trying to understand the depth of your challop, because I love a good challop.

The new album, The Boy Named If is surprisingly fun, consistently good and easy to like. I wasn't sure if he'd ever sound this focused and energized ever again - it crushes the overrated Look Now, and they even pull off the experiments "The Man You Love to Hate" and "Trick Out the Truth." (Probably not highlights to me, but they don't hurt the album.) He's done a shitload of albums since the '80s - two dozen? 30? I lost count - and of those there are six that I more or less like overall, one of which is technically a collection of live EP's. This is probably better than all of them. He's not breaking a whole lot of new ground, but he's playing up to his strengths and following through on the execution. So yes, probably his best since the '80s.

Agreed.

I'll have more to say next week.

And it sounds great.

Can't wait to read it! Meanwhile, I'm going to savor this with the relief that he didn't try something like a violin concerto.

At the very least this is his most *exciting* album since "When I was Cruel" (regardless of how anyone feels about that one).

I'm a few songs in and yeah...it actually sounds like a follow-up to This Year's Model. his voice hasn't really changed as much as I feared it would.

I listened to most of it on my drive into my part time job this evening and was pleasantly surprised. It was a very loud record, which I don't think I expected from him at this point in his career.

Unfortunately he was responsible for one of the worst shows I saw. It was at Madison square garden with a disinterested Replacements at the end of their rope in support. Elvis just seemed really old and tired.

So I am looking forward to repeated lessons.

Did Elvis have a big bush beard at that show?

I'm not sure about this, but I think my first exposure to Elvis Costello was through an SNL re-run...but not the famous one where he stops "Less Than Zero" and plays the not-yet-released "Radio Radio." I mean the one from the '90s where he was appearing in support of Mighty Like a Rose, and unknown to me he looked nothing like the Elvis Costello people knew:

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/images/5/54/1991-05-18_SNL_s01.jpg

He wasn't playing anything that would be remembered as a classic, which is probably why a few years later, I was kind of bewildered to see his name consistently mentioned in music guides as an artist I should check out. I vaguely remembered thinking - "I know I've seen him...really?" When I finally broke down and got My Aim Is True, I was immediately surprised by how much I liked it. I made sense of my initial confusion when I eventually worked my way through the entire Warner catalog.

*bushy

Also that photo doesn't seem to be coming up so here's a direct link: http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/images/5/54/1991-05-18_SNL_s01.jpg

he looked nothing like the Elvis Costello people knew

He has said this was the point of the beard and hair

It actually brings to mind Luke Wilson in The Royal Tenebaums, but with the ornate cap in place of the head band. FWIW, Luke Wilson said he was trying for a "lost Brian Wilson" look, but he didn't tell anyone back home in Dallas what he was doing it for, so he'd usually get these remarks like "so....I heard there's lots of drugs in Hollywood?"

I got only about a song and a half into Hey Clockface last year, after hearing some adoring praise (or maybe just fawning podcast interviews with him), before quitting.

I had a bootleg album "50,000,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong", great content but rough sound quality. Possibly my first record fair purchase (I really should have bought that pistols a&m single but I didn't have the £90)

Anyway, just recently I recompiled it from much improved online sources, including a complete "Hoover Factory"

I didn't think Hey Clockface was bad. Two of the advance "singles" for Hey Clockface, the title track and "Hetty O'Hara Confidential," felt like awful shit (or failed experiments to be kind) but the album surprisingly improved once I took those out. Without them, the whole thing turns into a cleanly bifurcated album with Side A focusing on the edgier, harder material and Side B showcasing his love for pre-rock pop ballads and torch songs. Side B is still an acquired taste but at least it's done well (much better than the dreadfully bland and dull North), and Side A wound up being pretty good.

I want to say he's consistently put out a good run of EP's over the last 15 years, each with four or five newly-recorded studio cuts that I really enjoy. Unfortunately they weren't released as EP's, they're all sunk into hour-long albums that don't extend that level of quality through the remaining tracks.

"At the very least this is his most *exciting* album since "When I was Cruel" (regardless of how anyone feels about that one)."

absolutely. I think Cruel was an alright album, pretty good, too long, but it was the last album by him I purchased and listened to a lot, and that was the last time I saw him. I wish he'd toured after this new one came out and not before, because I agree that this one is his best album since Painted by Memory. For one thing, Imposters are really sounding like the Attractions again (though I wish Nieve was a little higher in the mix).

I'm still listening to this thing, which uh I don't often do with any EC album as I age.

yeah me too. thanks for that review, it got me to give it a fair listen.

I need to give the new one The Boy Called If a fair listen too

Listened again last night, and as far as "Imposters are really sounding like the Attractions again" goes, I'd argue this is the first EC album full stop to sound (playing, production) like the Attractions since "Blood & Chocolate." I was listening last night and I forget which exact song it was but I kind of thought to myself, huh, this sounds like one of his early b-sides. Which might come off a backhanded compliment, but in Costello's case there's nothing backhanded about it at all.

Album is great and his best in many years but compressed to shit. Need a vinyl rip asap

Your problem is wanting to hear it on vinyl when you really should listen to it on an Apple watch speaker, the way it was meant to be heard.

Very funny story in the Jerry Marotta interview I posted on the Gabriel thread. I'll do my best to sum up.

Marotta had been hired by T-Bone Burnett to work on "Spike." Burnett told him, look, Elvis doesn't want you on the record, but I do, so just be cool and it will all work out. And then Burnett leaves for another session at the same time, saying something like "my job is to get the best musicians in the room together, and then I leave before I fuck it up!" So EC arrives and Marotta, politely, asks EC what he'd like him to do on the take. EC gives him some vague instruction and Marotta nails it on the first take. So the next song he's supposed to do he asks EC again, and EC, already impressed, basically says "you know what to do." At this point Marotta recalls something strange his brother Rick (also a drummer) once told him: "If you ever see Elvis Costello, punch that motherfucker for me! I will *pay* you to kick that motherfucker's ass!" So Jerry is wondering what's up.

Some time later he is working on the Ron Sexsmith record with Bruce Thomas, and he asks Bruce Thomas what's up. Bruce says he knows exactly what he's talking about. At some point a few years earlier, Rick Marotta was leaving the Chateau Marmont and there were some suitcases blocking his car. It turns out he was leaving the same time as EC and the Attractions, who, according to Bruce, had just gotten back from South America, where they had been doing a *ton* of cocaine, basically up for three weeks. So needless to say, tensions were ... high, and EC did not react well to someone who dared tell him to move his shit. Rick Marotta was about to punch him when someone defused things a little, though saying "you can't hit him, that's Elvis Costello" apparently made Rick want to punch him more. Bruce Thomas told Jerry it was "bad." Sometime toward the end of the session Bruce gave Jerry a copy of his book "The Big Wheel" to give to Rick, and the inscription read "Dear Rick, Don't worry, I hit him for you."

Marotta ended up doing seven songs in two days for "Spike," and EC even asked him to tour.

PaulTMA at 9:52 21 Jan 22

Album is great and his best in many years but compressed to shit. Need a vinyl rip asap

Everytime I check out a new EC record it really sounds harsh

xp LMAO

See, this is the first album since The Juliet Letters that doesn't sound shitty. An immediate attraction.

i guess compression is in the ear of the behearer. i'm spinning the vinyl and that first track is a clattering bucket of mush. and supposedly the vinyl is preferable to the cd. on the other hand it sounds like there's a good batch of tunes in there somewhere. in 10 years when this madness ends they'll be releasing the "uncompressed remasters."

I wasn't consciously trying to pick up the energy, but I'd had the pleasure of listening to [producer] Sebastian Krys' mix of Spanish Model, which involved listening to the original instrumental tracks that we cut 43 years earlier [for This Year's Model]. When Sebastian pushed the faders up in and around these different Latin artists singing adaptations of my lyrics from all that time ago, he found all sorts of power and energy in the band. I think you'll find there are some tracks on Spanish Model where the band actually sounds more forceful [than on the original album]. We were all excited to hear what the singers brought back to us in their adaptation — bearing in mind that the three of us [in the Imposters] have been working together 44 years, on and off. It never harms to get a reminder of what it feels like to do something thrilling. Sometimes you want to concentrate on a ballad, as I did in Paris for Hey Clockface. Sometimes you want to let yourself go.

From a People magazine interview

https://people.com/music/elvis-costello-releases-the-boy-named-if-exclusive-interview/

I'm not really hearing what people like about this record, it sounds like the usual mess to me, maybe slightly better than usual but not significantly. It's the same problem with every Imposters record since The Delivery Man - just too much guitar. I don't like the way EC plays guitar!

I tend to agree but I gave up long before that. Are you saying you like The Delivery Man or is it the one before that, whatever that is?

I don't like his guitar playing either, hence my relief when it sounded well-mixed here.

It's almost weird that he never really, um, improved his technique, unlike Alex Chilton and Marshall Crenshaw, as discussed on a recent Alex Chilton revive.

I thought Crenshaw demonstrated he could write excellent lead lines from the beginning?

I would've wanted Crenshaw as a sessioneer in the '80s and '90s.

I guess maybe he was always good. But also had the impression that he got better with age.

I tend to agree but I gave up long before that. Are you saying you like The Delivery Man or is it the one before that, whatever that is?

I guess the last one I really enjoyed all the way through was All This Useless Beauty. Am a big, sentimental fan of Spike, Mighty Like A Rose and Juliet Letters because they're the first EC albums I listened (and also I think they're pretty good).

I don't like the songs on When I Was Cruel, but it's (at the very least) a distinctive-sounding record compared to what came after it, which to me all sound like boring reduxes of Blood and Chocolate

Since then I've enjoyed his interviews more than his music

A late favourite as a counterpoint:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oJzEhR3Obw

(Although late = still 26 years old)

That Marotta story is funny.

Generally I am a longtime EC stan, but I agree that his guitar playing is... um. Sometimes it's exactly what's needed. Sometimes it's inoffensive. And then sometimes it just doesn't need to be there at all!

I mean, the dude can can call in James muthaflippin Burton. Or Charlie Sexton. Or Marc Ribot. Or various people called "T-Bone."

I don't think he's ever claimed to be a virtuoso, just a highly idiosyncratic practitioner. And in a live setting, I can understand why playing guitar himself allows him to connect with and shape the song in a way that he couldn't if he were just in front of a band singing.

I don't think he is a bad player (the guitar work on TYM rules!) just that he consistently defaults to this toneless, strumming-old-man-with-an-overdrive-pedal sound

marshall has def. done some woodshedding over the years.

I don't think I ever disliked EC's guitar playing...or rather, if I did, I didn't like the overall record anyway, so his guitar playing never stood out as being the thing that sunk a record. I always liked the nickname "Little Hands of Concrete"...

I still not convinced that this album is much better than solid, but "Paint the Red Rose Blue" sure is pretty.

I'd agree it's solid.

New album seems promising, thanks yall. I haven't really kept up with him since the 80s, but remember thinking he'd had some kind of emotional breakthrough, rather than just singing lessons (although maybe those too), to put across those songs so well, on Painted From Memory---mind you, I thought it would have sounded even better if they'd presented the whole thing to Dionne Warwick, for lead or solo vocals--but still. Maybe it was that he'd loved Bacharach so long, even covering him on Stiffs Live, and the chance to write with him, the challenge of it too, made a breakthrough baby. Also mind you, I haven't heard it since 2000 at the latest, don't know what I'd think now. But my friend had the edition with a bonus disc collection, EC performing some of those songs here and there, also very nice indeed.
Local jazz station still occasionally plays tracks from the xp Frisell version:
...The Sweetest Punch...consists of jazz arrangements of the Painted From Memory songs done by Frisell and his studio group. It features vocals by Costello on two songs, and by jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on two songs, one of which ... The Sweetest Punch, was made concurrently by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, released in 1999 on another Universal label, Decca Records. It consists of jazz arrangements of the Painted From Memory songs done by Frisell and his studio group. It features vocals by Costello on two songs, and by jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on two songs, one of which is a duet employing both.

Fuck, sorry!