Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

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.

Really don’t care for this Elvis en Español edition of This Year’s Model, sorry.

Also was this the recent discussion of drum tech the pfox was referring to or was it more recent?

take it to the 'no action is indefensible' thread

Ha! Believe I already may have mentioned it there. Also, every time I revive that one, somebody invariably says "What's up with the original post?"

James Redd: no, I hadn't seen this thread. Bewildered to see that the EC thread was talking about ... Bruce Springsteen drum sounds?! That's confusing enough on the Boss thread.

I don't know the edition you refer to, James Redd.