The Elvis Costello Essentials
by Rickey Wright, Amazon.com
When it came to winning a record contract, Elvis Costello could get arrested. Already signed to pioneering British indie Stiff, Costello hied himself down to a hotel where executives from U.S. giant CBS Records were convening. He got hauled away by the police for his trouble, but soon his debut, My Aim Is True, was more than just a hot import; the former Declan McManus was a full-fledged Columbia recording artist.
Essentials
Costello's first three albums followed one another at eight-month intervals in America, where his bared-teeth stance, meld of classic and new-wave values, and irresistible visual style made him a star. Aim made his case with pissed-off verbal vigor ("She's got a 10-inch bamboo cigarette holder and a black patent-leather glove"), while 1978's This Year's Model upped the ante, the newly formed Attractions storming through Costello's paranoiac slaps at radio, the nascent supermodel industry, and the general sense of an Orwellian curtain coming down over modern life. The last was a major preoccupation of 1979's Armed Forces, a frilly cake with a stiletto, or an automatic rifle, inside. Though not Costello's best, it soon made the American top 10. (The Rykodisc editions of these albums are remastered with plenty of eye-opening bonus tracks, as are all the label's reissues of Costello's work between 1977 and 1986. The three records described above are also included in the 2 1/2 Years box set with a fiery, rare concert recording, Live at El Mocambo.)
Over the following decades Costello ranged all over the musical map, producing everything from a disc of Nashville favorites to a chamber-music song cycle. Three very diverse high points came with Get Happy!! (1980), King of America (1986), and Blood & Chocolate (1986).
Get Happy!!, the follow-up to Armed Forces, reflected Costello's nonstop-work ethic. The album offered 18 pun-filled views of romance and two obscure covers, mostly performed in a cranked-up style inspired by '60s Stax/Volt soul. King of America also concerned itself with American roots music as a means of self-expression, but this time the sound was delicate, mostly acoustic, and more pained than anything else the man had ever recorded. It resonates more and more with age. Costello, who had done almost the entire record without the Attractions, reunited with them for the bashed-out Blood & Chocolate, a severely underrated broadside.
What to Get Next
If those six masterpieces aren't enough, the Costello catalog is full of plenty more--good, bad, and occasionally indifferent. Among the best of the rest are Trust (1981) and Imperial Bedroom (1982). Trust nicely walks the line between the band's sophistication and its sleek power, while Imperial Bedroom is a bit too self-conscious to live up to its reputation as a masterpiece. Spike, which marked Costello's move to Warner Bros., is a clattering challenge but features some of his most articulately venomous post-'70s writing.
The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, packed with 22 hits and near-misses, contains many great songs; it hardly preempts the albums it draws on, however.
For the Completist
While not flailing, exactly, Costello has now and again seemed at a loss as to how to move; the ear-piercing clutter of Punch the Clock is a perfect example. Its greatest songs (the white-soul "Everyday I Write the Book," the protests "Shipbuilding" and "Pills and Soap") sit alongside some decent tracks and a fair amount of undistinguished blare. Another reunion with the Attractions (and early producer Nick Lowe), Brutal Youth, is uneven but has many clear-eyed moments.
It's easy to appreciate the impulse--a failing personal life--that led to Almost Blue, a moody set of country covers. It rarely hits as hard as its inspirations, though, with the exception of a broken version of Gram Parsons's "How Much I Lied." Costello's up-and-down commercial fortunes took another dive with 1984's Goodbye Cruel World, on which some good songs are buried under who knows how many layers of machinery. The disc's sound, though, is hardly more forced than the strained experiments of Mighty Like a Rose. All This Useless Beauty closed his career at Warners; it slid dangerously close to willful opaqueness in spots. The best commentary on his Warners years might be Costello's own warm, sly, sarcastic liner notes to the compilation Extreme Honey.