best post-'80s Elvis Costello album

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.

agree about Alibi -- for some reason, EC seems to think it's a real crowd pleaser (he's played it every time I've seen him since WIWC was released), but it's pretty unbearable.

How do I not own a copy of Brutal Youth anymore? Must have pressed it into somebody's hands while drunk.

So, The Delivery Man instead. Liked it when it came out but it soon lost its lustre. Only thing I can remember offhand is that "Monkey" song (enh) and "The Scarlet Tide" which is probably one of my favourite single EC moments.

Hm, some alright stuff on here: "Either Side of the Same Town" sounds pretty classic, even if the vocal performance won't let it punch its weight. I recall thinking at the time that this band was getting as close to GP's 'cosmic American music' as anyone ever does: a rock-country-soul hybrid that sounds both organic and compelling, and I still think that in spots, but the songs don't have the traction they need to pin this album as anything but half-decent. Rocking hard isn't incompatible with a lack of conviction. Got to admit this album has its moments, though ("all the words of tenderness...")

http://www.robertchristgau.com/icon/s2.gif

Huge profile of EC in this week's New Yorker. It's not available online but you can read the beginning here.

there’s some amazing shit on brutal youth, “london’s brilliant parade” oh man <3 beautiful song.

I think my favorite aspects of the “froom sound” occur when things get mellow. I like what he gets out of organs.. I love los lobos’ colossal head (another smoky tube-y froom produced album from around this time)

It's rare I say a production lets down an album. BY has the songs, but, gad, Froom's mix is a clattery, ugly thing.

om

Love the sound of BY

"Toledo" from Painted From Memory is one of THE best songs

I finally got into that album when we did Wishin' and Votin' - the BURT BACHARACH SONGBOOK Poll Results

AGreed!

Everything from Spike to All This Useless is pretty great, the covers record excepted. After that it’s all like one long album. Some of the songs on WIWC are ok but the singing and guitar-playing are atrocious

Everything? Great?

I like the spike-mighty-brodsky-brutal-useless run, yes

spike was the first ec record I heard, and brodsky was the first i bought, so they’re ,ore sentimental choices for me

Gotta be at least 10-15 of his best songs spread across those albums, and they’re the last gasp before he starts oversinging on absolutely everything

I don't think I've heard a single one of his 21st Century records. Even when I saw him live he played very little post-Imperial Bedroom, I recognized nearly every song

I gave his post-'80s work a few more chances over the years, and while it's still not a patch on the magnificent albums that came between 1977 to 1986, he's recorded at least a few dozen gems. It's telling that one frequent complaint (or observation) I see from critics is how a song they glanced over from this period will be a pleasant surprise in concert or how a good song debuted in concert will come off as a disappointment when it's eventually released on an album. He can and continues to write good songs (mainly for himself - he may be the greatest songwriter since Dylan, but more often than not, other people have a difficult time interpreting his songs). And during the '90s and '00s, he was consistently an excellent performer in concert. But when it comes to making records, he's become spotty and inconsistent.

Of his studio albums, "When I Was Cruel" is easily his best - a little long but the one excellent album he's made since the '80s. "Painted from Memory" took a long time to grow on me, but I now think it's a fine pop album. "Brutal Youth" and "All This Useless Beauty" took some time to grow on me too - still a bit spotty, but they're generally good albums.

(a few dozen gems as in tracks, not albums)

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/

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!