Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

Love Pads, Paws.

I never liked Spike until I got Rhino's 2001 reissue with the bonus disc full of studio demos. 11 of those demos cover songs that were ultimately included on the album, and taken together with "God's Comic" (which already had minimal adornment and fits easily next to the demos) it felt like an album to me. I love it now and still listen to those 12 tracks as if they were the LP that was really released.

FWIW, I never hated the actual Spike, but I never took to its production. I'm not sure what how to describe it - overproduced doesn't really nail it - but it always sounded like a deranged Disney album to me if that makes any sense to anyone else.

*not sure how to describe my reaction to it

It's not so much overproduced as there is just a lot of production. So many sessions, so many session musicians. Made the most of that WB advance.

Supposedly, he did the first Spike tour solo because he'd spent so much of the advance on the record that he couldn't afford to hire a touring band (though he toured with a band later in the year).

I listened to Spike a lot when it was released, and many of those listens were to figure out why I didn't like it much...or what specifically made it less appealing to me than pretty much any other EC record up to that point (though I hadn't heard Goodbye Cruel World or Almost Blue yet). The arrangements are as overstuffed as they are unfocused, and for much of it, he sounds like he's trying to shoehorn every tangentially-related musical/lyrical idea into more confined spaces. Weirdly, the arrangements and orchestrations are just as crowded on Mighty Like A Rose, but they seem more in service to the material, and generally (but not always) stay out of the way.

I think that may be partly that T Bone Burnett is, despite using many of the same musicians all the time, less eccentric a producer than Mitchell Froom. The Froomiest Burnett ever gets is on something like "Martinis and Bikinis," but that album is still less distorted/distracted than many typical Froom productions (save perhaps Kiko which kind of splits the difference between a weird roots Burnett production and a sci-fi folk Froom production; Rumour and Sigh leans more on the Burnett side, too). (Should note I almost always like Froom's Froominess!). Anyway, it should surprise no-one that EC went Full Froom for the next album.

I like Spike fine. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror is a good track.

Just for housekeeping's sake I will say that I love Almost Blue and all the non-album ephemera attached to it.

I will not struggle to defend Goodbye Cruel World as an opus, but there are some good things on it.

heard a new single by him the other day ("Hey Clockface"), man his voice has changed in recent years

it always sounded like a deranged Disney album to me if that makes any sense to anyone else.

otm! I can hear "Pads, Paws and Claws" on a mid '80s Disney film no one remembers.

Rumour and Sigh leans more on the Burnett side, too). (Should note I almost always like Froom's Froominess!). Anyway, it should surprise no-one that EC went Full Froom for the next album.

I primarily think of Froominess as an over-reliance on Hammond organ (e.g. Temple of Low Men)

One of the few times a Froom production was worth the effort (besides those late '80s Richard Thompson albums) is on Kiko. I've been binging on Los Lobos, a band time has forgotten, and they and From gelled.

Esp. once you include the Latin Playboys.

Dud

Ha, Spike and Rumor and Sigh were the records that made me realize I do not like Froom’s production.

Though again worth noting that Froom did not produce "Spike" ! Though tbf, he might as well have. The tracks he plays on on "Spike," recorded in LA, are like a conflation of Froom's usual crew and Tom Waits' cats:

Michael Blair – glockenspiel, marimba, tambourine, xylophone, bells, timpani, vibraphone, Chinese drums, Oldsmobile hubcap, Parade drum, anvil, whiplash, crash-box, temple bells, snare drum, "magic table", metal pipe, "Martian dog bark"
Ralph Forbes – electric drums, drum programming
Mitchell Froom – organ, harmonium, electric piano, chamberlin, Indian harmonium
Roger McGuinn – twelve-string guitar, Rickenbacker bass guitar
Jim Keltner – tom-toms, snare drum, Chinese cymbal
Jerry Marotta – drums
Buell Neidlinger – cello, double bass
Marc Ribot – banjo, electric guitar, Spanish guitar, sounds
Jerry Scheff – electric bass, double bass, fuzz bass
Benmont Tench – piano, clavinet, spinet, Vox Continental
Tom "T Bone" Wolk – accordion, bass

I primarily think of Froominess as an over-reliance on Hammond organ (e.g. Temple of Low Men)

Ha, it's actually Froomier than that! It's the organ setting on a Chamberlin, which is the Froomiest instrument of them all.

Huh...well, I was today years old when I learned that the first time I heard Buell Neidlinger was on Spike.

I (fairly/rationally or not) still place the blame at Froom’s feet, mainly because I love some of Burnett’s other productions (especially How Will The Wolf Survive? and King Of America), which are free of Froomy distractions.

xp

Daring Adventures and Amnesia offer sharper, restrained Froomery.

Ironically, the core of KoA is even Froomier!

Elvis Costello – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, lead vocal
T-Bone Burnett – guitars, backing vocals
Mitchell Froom – Hammond organ, harpsichord, organ, doctored piano
Tom "T-Bone" Wolk – electric guitar, piano accordion, electric bass
Jerry Scheff – string bass, electric bass
Mickey Curry – brushes, drums, sticks

Plus more of a mishmash of the Brunett crew, Waits crews and the Attractions:

Michael Blair – marimba
James Burton – electric guitar, Dobro, acoustic guitar
Tom Canning – piano
Ralph Carney – saxophone
Jim Keltner – sticks, drums, brushes
Earl Palmer – brushes, drums
Ron Tutt – brushes, drums
Ray Brown – double bass on "Eisenhower Blues"
David Hidalgo – harmony vocal on "Lovable"
Jo-El Sonnier – French accordion on "American Without Tears"
Steve Nieve – piano, Hammond organ on "Jack Of All Parades", "Suit of Lights", and "Betrayal"
Bruce Thomas – electric bass on "Suit of Lights" and "Betrayal"
Pete Thomas – sticks, drums on "Suit of Lights" and "Betrayal"

Froomiest Bandersnatch

Interesting. I honestly never looked at the personnel for King Of America, though I remember a lot of review snippets at the time saying things like, “He using the ORIGINAL Elvis’ musicians!” But the arrangements are perfectly restrained, especially compared to Spike, and my only complaint about the production is the sharp/brittle high end...but in the mid-‘80s, pretty much everything sounded like that.

xp

Yeah KoA has a better overall sound than Spike

But it's important to note that after this album, the laws were changed so that artists were only allowed ONE person nicknamed "T-Bone" on any given recording.

But there was a grandfather clause that stipulated the following: if you are already recording an album, you are permitted to keep both session players - however, one of them must agree to be called "T-Dawg" instead of "T-Bone."

Yeah KoA has a better overall sound than Spike

― Fjord Explorer (Ye Mad Puffin),

And songs. But, like a close election with its accumulation of electoral votes, I get in the unenviable position of comparing "Ms. Macbeth" to "Poisoned Rose" and "Satellite" to "Glitter Gulch."

KOA rests in that rare place of boasting more mediocre to terrible songs on a great album than expected.

In my mind, "Glitter Gulch" is tied with "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" for worst song on an otherwise great album.

It's just a coincidence that they're both internally long stupid Western pastiches in 2/4 time.

*infernally

heard a new single by him the other day ("Hey Clockface"), man his voice has changed in recent years

I'm a very dilettante listener after Juliet and Memory, but imo it"s a feature (not a bug) of Elvis that both his voice and his singing change every few years

spike was my intro to elvis -- iirc rolling stone was all like 'best EC record since some girls!' which is weird because both king of america and blood and chocolate are obviously better

i liked it fine -- the mccartney tracks are great and still have a hard time thinking of a song more vitriolic yet appealing than tramp the dirt down. but also it was an early example of CD bloat and it gave me the wrong idea about EC, which would be corrected with the 2 1/2 years box set

not sure but i *might* actually like mighty like a rose better

The problem with MLAR is his singing is the equivalent of the beard. The arrangements too.

i really like the outro on invasion hit parade. that's all i've got, really

"Glitter Gulch" was the only song I liked on King of America when I bought it at 15. I liked Blood & Chocolate more, but that was the end of my EC phase, which had begun with the purchase of a cassette best-of, followed by Trust, the year before.

The problem with MLAR is his singing is the equivalent of the beard. The arrangements too.

lol i first saw him on tour with burt bacharach

I've never bothered with any of the Costello albums post Spike. It's an hour long with four good songs, and the thought of listening to at least twice that many less-good songs on 30 years of less-good albums is unappealing. More to the point, none of the singles that I have heard made me feel otherwise.

King of America was a bold sonic statement in 1986, but it only has the same number of good songs as Spike (and I include Glitter Gulch as one of them). I agree that Blood and Chocolate is better than either.

The point when contrivance began to overtake inspiration was Imperial Bedroom, which was loved by critics at the time and is not mentioned much now.

I almost agree with Puffin, "Glitter Gulch" is the worst original song on King of America, but the pair of covers thrown in are even worse. In a lot of ways King of America is my favorite Elvis Costello album, but that's only because I've ignored those three tracks and replaced one of them with "King of Confidence" (MacManus originally debated on whether to use that track or "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," and unfortunately he made the wrong choice). That 13-track program is what I think of when I think about King of America, and I absolutely love it.

Blood and Chocolate is his last truly great album. He's made some awful, AWFUL albums since then, but he's also done a handful of good ones that I quite like. A few of them are technically "bonus disc" material (what I mentioned about Spike, the acoustic demos with Paul McCartney), but he considers them to be albums in their own right. What's essentially a two-hour live album with Steve Nieve may be my favorite release from him since the '80s. When I Was Cruel is probably my favorite of the studio albums since then (again, some clunkers padding a very long album, but still good). The Burt Bacharach album is an acquired taste, but it's the only left-field side trip that I really like. An anthology covering his post-Demon/Columbia years would be highly useful. It wouldn't be on par with his earlier work, but it could be a nice distillation of highly listenable material from a wildly uneven mountain of recordings.

"Glitter Gulch" is the worst original song on King of America,

Nope. Competition: "Poisoned Rose," "Eisenhower Blues." And the Animals cover, for god's sake.

Only one of those is an original, though.

Not true.

OK, if you're counting: "Eisenhower Blues" is the cover. Throw in "Glitter Gulch," mentioned earlier, and we still got dead space.

the last three tracks on king of america are among my favorite things he's ever done

The point when contrivance began to overtake inspiration was Imperial Bedroom, which was loved by critics at the time and is not mentioned much now.

!!! This album is great. It's definitely the last album where the Attractions get to be the Attractions and not basically hired guns constrained by EC's controlling tendencies/specificity. Though I guess "Blood & Chocolate" has some real oomph to it, too. I find a lot of his subsequent albums ... fine to good, with moments of greatness and moments of really not greatness.

Reading his book, I was impressed by his thorough musical knowledge, which made me modify my feelings that he was, especially later, being a dilettante. In turns out that, go figure, he just has broad, deep, encyclopedic music nerd interests in lots of music.

was just the other day marveling at nieve’s piano and bruce's bass on “human hands”

I actually think "Poisoned Rose" is all right, and it fits well within that extraordinary run of torch songs. (And I already mentioned both the Animals cover and "Eisenhower Blues," which as pointed out is a cover too.)

I was surprised how many Elvis Costello fans I knew actually singled out Imperial Bedroom as their favorite - this came up only because of that recent tour built around it (and the show I went to was pretty awesome). It took awhile for it to grow on me, but I quite like it as well. I'll add that his singing on it is pretty great, especially on "Beyond Belief" (one of my favorite tracks, period) and "Town Cryer" which I think he wanted Barry White to cover.

Elvis Costello reminds me of another lifelong student, Martin Scorsese, where their encyclopedic knowledge has enabled them to do an extraordinary run of work no one else could have done, primarily for the way they would recontextualize ideas in startling new and personal ways. It's also led them to go beyond their comfort zone, exploring other genres they've grown to love, and the results can be mixed. For example, New York, New York isn't wholly successful (though it's still aged pretty well) and Almost Blue never works though I always felt his cover of "Psycho" and King of America were successful and wholly organic manifestations of everything he absorbed from country music. So much of his post-2000 work, like so much of Scorsese's work from the same era, suffers from being too self-conscious and it does come off as being very academic. To be fair, sometimes it'll work better live than on record - it's startling how many latter day gems I'll see or hear on a live recording only to be disappointed by the studio version.

birdistheword are you actually marcelo, because i cannot think of another writer so easily reminded of other lifelong students whose encyclopedic knowledge has enabled them to do an extraordinary run of blogs?

i have long appreciated your writing but could you please be less of a prat

*yes the bass on paranoid expresses birmingham's hatred of thatcher*

I'm not marcelo and I don't know him, but am I being called a prat for what I'm posting here or what marcelo's written elsewhere (or maybe here)?

i apologise for mistaking you

Elvis Costello reminds me of another lifelong student, Martin Scorsese, where their encyclopedic knowledge has enabled them to do an extraordinary run of work no one else could have done, primarily for the way they would recontextualize ideas in startling new and personal ways.

marcello would never have wrapped up a sentence with this kind of bullshit

?

First, that was in response to Josh's comment that he had an encyclopedic knowledge, and I brought up Scorsese because I think they're alike in that way and it's the key to a lot of their best work. I actually link the two a lot, though more in open discussion rather than writing about it. If you think that's bullshit, then please articulate a reasonable response instead of stooping to petty insults.