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After an artist has released four sensational albums there often follows a "greatest hits" package that chronicles his-her music to date with songs available on the previous LP's. This convention exists primarily to capitalize on the folks who held off buying earlier releases but who can be enticed to take the plunge by the well-known material on the hits disc. This also gives the artist time for a vacation on tne Riviera. One expects a little more from Elvis Costello though, and he once again delivers, this time with a career retrospective of unreleased, reworked, or unavailable (in the U.S.), tunes.
Taking Liberties' twenty cuts are dominated by work done around the Get Happy album (including different versions of "Clowntime is Over" and "Black and White World") but there is no lack of earlier material. "Radio Sweetheart," featuring Nick Lowe on bass, is one of Elvis' earliest compositions and sounds straight off of My Aim is True except for the highly polished production.
Most recognizable of the unavailable songs are the bunch from the This Year's Model sessions, particularly "I Don't Want to Go To Chelsea," which appears on the import version of the album and is a mainstay in Elvis' concert repertoire. "Night Rally" and "Big Tears" are slower paced songs that were losers in the now obsolete one - slow - song - per - Elvis - album sweepstakes. Their quality proves that a Costello loser is no loser at all. "Wednesday Week" is the only one of these previously unknown to this critic, though it's a wonder it was for it presented tremendously frenetic rock.
Music written during Armed Forces is limited to "Crawling to the USA" but is made up for by the already mentioned abundance of recent material. Nearly all these songs have a sparse accompaniment and slow tempo that gives full exposure to Elvis' ever-improving vocalization. The multiple vocal tracks on "Black and White World" are an excellent example as are both "Hoover Factory" and "Just a Memory." The latter is particularly beautiful, sung with real passion and backed only by Steve Naive's solo paino.
If music like this is taking liberties one can only hope Elvis Costello keeps taking them.
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