From The Elvis Costello Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
Q magazine
|
Q Special Edition
|
—
|
This Year's Model, Blood & Chocolate, Brutal Youth
Danny Eccleston
If they'd been the Pistols there'd have been jizz in Bruce's sandwich.
This Year's Model
Blood & Chocolate
Brutal Youth
To Demon's already estimable Costello reissue range, add three with a common theme: the Attractions. This Year's Model from 1978 was Costello's first with the band, a still-incredible combination of songwriterly spleen, Bruce Thomas's melodic bass doodles, Steve Nieve's ingenu keyboards ("like sirens" writes Costello) and Pete Thomas's preposterously musical drumming. Blood & Chocolate — the cranky, love-raddled 1986 reunion — spawned the bestial "Uncomplicated" and the unbearably exposed "I Want You," though Costello is keen to note that their next meeting, for 1994's nostalgia-laced Brutal Youth, was by default rather than design. Best here is the beat-poppy "13 Steps Lead Down," maddest is the electorate-chiding "20% Amnesia" — like Neil Young's "Fuckin' Up" with upsetting Brecht/Weill interludes. In all three cases, the bonus CD is a surprising boon (there's a lovely version of the James Carr-associated "Pouring Water On A Drowning Man" attached to Blood & Chocolate), while Costello's sleevenotes are funny, enlightening and rarely resist a sideswipe at Thomas.
|
|
Clipping.
Cover and contents page.
|
|
|
|
External links