Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

those frisell things were good, forgot about those. used to have to pay through the nose for that CD.

All This Useless Beauty - classic

yeah i'm not a costello fan but this is great, esp "the other end of the telescope" and "distorted angel"

I loved that when it came out but it hasn't held my attention in the past 10 years. I should revisit it.

he certainly toured a shitload behind it and did a bunch of duo shows with Steve Nieve (which he bundled up and sold in an overpriced box set)

Walked into an Italian restaurant on Sunday and was surprised to hear This Is Hell playing. Admittedly Elvis was playing in the Playhouse across the road and it was probably just Spotify on random, but still a nice surprise.

After years of never being able to pick a favourite EC album, I think I may have to choose Brutal Youth after all. But like Bowie, no one album comes close in defining him, so there is that.

I personally like the production, clearly a backtracking from the kitchen sink sound of Mighty and Spike and most likely a welcome product of the post-grunge stripped down "BACK TO BASICS" ethos, although I do not believe her ever pushed it as such (thankfully)

This last week I've finally heard this and surprisingly like a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsh61d6qBzE

it's funny that both MIghty Like a Rose and Brutal Youth are produced by Mitchell Froom. He uses similar reverbs and studio effects on both frankly, but the band makes the difference.

xpost I like the Back to Basics approach, I just don't like how BY literally sounds. Unlike This Years Model and Armed Forces, or Trust and Blood n Chocolate, impeccable Nick Lowe productions that are powerful and passionate but also very precise, the Lowe/Froom hybrid of Brutal Youth is just a mess to my ears.

I saw one of those Elvis/Steve duo dates, was great.

Saw him on Useless Beauty tour, too, which was the last with Bruce, and you could sort of tell.

For some reason I thought Froom only produced part of that record and three or four songs were handled by Lowe. Maybe I'm just thinking of him playing bass.

I can appreciate that the saucepan-like snare drum on BY may not be pleasant to everyone's ears, but I like it

maybe that's right (xpost)

I hate the drums recorded for BY.

and I like them!

Just decided to listen to My Aim Is True on a whim for the first time in 10-odd years and it's not as awful as I remembered; helps that I forgot those 'authoritative' reviews I so readily trusted back in the day.

Get Happy is the peak for me. Hook after hook after hook, and the wordplay is out of control.

yeah it's a great album, and long, and full of songs! so many songs crammed onto one LP. keeping everything short, like 2.5 minutes, was a great idea.

I love how Xgau, in his review of Get Happy!, backhandedly praises the wordplay:

why deny lines like "You lack lust you're so lackluster" or "I speak double dutch to a real double duchess"? On the other hand, why bother digging them out?

(The album gets a B)

And then in his Trust review makes fun of it:

Who ever said he wasn't much of a singer? Was that me? No, I said he wasn't much of a poet--all wordplay as swordplay and puns for punters (one of which means something, one of which doesn't, and both of which took me ten seconds).

(The album gets an A)

The bootlegs from the Get Happy era - really any from that early era - are so propelled by amphetamines they're hilariously exhausting. As if the thing the band needed was the play more, and faster! I love it, though.

christgau's whole schtick is always backhandedly praising something while low key being a dick about it i dunno, i feel like i don't even know or care wtf he's even talking about like 75% of the time

Xgau taught me what it means to hate music.

Same! God bless him.

Do we not like the Dean? Inscrutable as his prose may sometimes be, he has turned me on to so much great music over the years I will forever be in his debt.

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

I have found his reviews educational and his prose influential, but in general (and particularly from the 90s on) I find his approach and opinions as often vapid as they are on point.

The bootlegs from the Get Happy era - really any from that early era - are so propelled by amphetamines they're hilariously exhausting.

Indeed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94pXANbucw

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 27, 2018

I'm glad I piss everyone off. His fans are skeptical of if not downright hostile toward me. We haven't agreed consistently in over thirty years.

and in person I've found him a creep.

i've heard that the dude's a bit of a creep too, but to be honest i get that from his writing too. i think some of his older essays, the one on al green and the one he wrote after lennon died, are thoughtful and better than his blurbs. "i feel like i don't even know or care wtf he's even talking about like 75% of the time" is otm for me.

UMS is speaking partly in jest, but the reality is we don't agree on sexuality, his fascination with certain so-called geniuses, and his increasingly cramped blurbing style.

His disdain for anything even remotely artsy or Romantic, especially in the more European sense, is why I've never managed to take him seriously, though our tastes overlap at least 20% of the time.

RC being a creep in person (as opposed to just in print) is the least surprisingly thing I've ever heard.

here's a question: I feel like I once heard, somewhere, a bouncy reggae cover version of "the beat" by someone. but I can't seem to locate that now. ring any bells?

it's by Elvis Costello on TYM iirc

man y'all are making me want to dive back into this catalogue again. I don't think I've heard much past Blood & Chocolate but I remember liking that one a lot.

tbh it's been really tough for me to listen to Elvis Costello these last few years. I had a friend who was really big into him - I brought My Aim is True to one of our poker nights and he absolutely loved it, we'd listen to that CD pretty much every time we got together. saw EC w/ him at Summerfest and it was awesome. he died of an overdose 4 years ago. I heard "Watching the Detectives" in a mall a few months after that and felt like I was getting PTSD. I had to run away. It was so weird. I've been kind of scared to hear his music again.

I do not like the Dean, can't speak for anyone else
Alfred has his poster above his bed iirc

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 27, 2018

I'm glad I piss everyone off. His fans are skeptical of if not downright hostile toward me. We haven't agreed consistently in over thirty years.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 27, 2018 5:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

alfred it was just a light zing, i just recalled you seemed like a big fan, which i obviously exagerrated in my memory, apologies!

Get Happy is the peak for me. Hook after hook after hook, and the wordplay is out of control.

opportunity & secondary modern, both sooo great. watch yr step is like a chorus-less retread of secondary modern.

love opportunity, probably my favorite on get happy!!

i hear the similarity beween watch your step and secondary modern, but i disagree about watch your step being a retread, possibly my fav song on trust.

you lack lust, you're so lacklustre

I wish you luck with a capital F

His vocal on Watch Your Step is one of his best.

possibly nieve's most measured and beautiful piano/organ

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jul/06/elvis-costello-cancer-diagnosis-cancels-tour-dates :(

my 50yo Fall-mad housemate played me his 'my aim is true' LP the other night. it took a few goes round, but its such a fun album!

New album with the Imposters coming. I like the two songs he shared this week.

Under Lime being the better of the two.

yeah Under Lime is a great song; haven't liked his stuff for quite some time. However, the album cover is in the running for the worst cover of all fucking time.

Scroll past the bellend 2001 posts

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/ode-to-elvis-costellos-stellar-backing-bands-the-attractions-the-imposters-invisible-hits/

Thanks for this tylerw. Great to see Nieve and the Thomases get their due. That Rockpalast show is incredible.

the rockpalast show has probably the definitive version of "the beat"

Well it turns out that “Under Lime” might be the only song on the new album that I like.