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With every rock star and his (or her) brother (or sister) releasing multi-set compact discs (the Bee Gees? Oh, come on), Elvis Costello's entry into the repackaging — or is it just recycling — rodeo looks a little ... thin at first.
Let's face it. Two CDs seems an underachievement when Rod Stewart can grind out four, and even ELO can shake out three.
Of course, what we're forgetting is that Costello is an artist who regularly lays down 20 tracks on a single album. Containing 47 songs which translates to more than 170 minutes of music — Girls, Girls, Girls is more a tour de force than it at first appears. 1985's The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, remember, was a modest 16 tracks long.
Spike, Costello's last record, and Almost Blue are the only albums not represented here. The former is missing because it's on Costello's new label, Warner Brothers. The latter because, if all indications are correct, Costello couldn't stand.
So "A Good Year for the Roses" notwithstanding, what we're faced with is a fairly comprehensive retrospective of Costello's first decade as an artist.
What is surprising is how well the collection works. Dividing his selections into four groups (although he never explains what the groups are), Costello jumbles his music chronologically.
Side one, for example, opens with "Watching the Detectives," "I Hope You're Happy Now," "This Year's Girl" and "Lovers Walk," jumping from the late '70s to the late '80s, back to the late '70s and into the mid-'80s with remarkable fluidity.
Like Neil Young's Decade, Girls, Girls, Girls doesn't confine itself to Costello's Greatest Hits. Including album tracks like "Girls Talk" (which was a hit in Britain for Dave Edmunds), "King Horse" and "Beyond Belief" among more familiar singles like "Alison," "Pump It Up" and "Oliver's Army," there is enough arcane yet immediate material on the CDs to keep them fresh and furious.
An added bonus are Costello's liner notes, which are both insightful and comically ambiguous. Particularly interesting are his scribblings for the song "Green Shirt," confirming — in a roundabout way — the fact that the Quisling Clinic mentioned in the music IS the local landmark.
Girls, Girls, Girls is that rarest of beasts — a "best of" album that can stand on its own. Like Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, it flows as an artistic statement. Not all are Costello's greatest hits, but this surely ranks among his greatest works.
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