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It's a measure of Elvis Costello's ability as a songwriter that after a mere three years as a recording artist his fifth LP release in Canada should be a collection of twenty songs that haven't yet found their way onto any album.
Taking Liberties is all the more remarkable for the fact that eighteen of the tracks have been released in Britain on various singles and EPs. Far from containing the failed ideas and inferior work that “previously unreleased” LPs usually do, Taking Liberties is a very vital Costello album from both a historic and artistic perspective.
As a career retrospective, Taking Liberties neatly reviews Costello’s “history-on-record” with tracks from the last three years. Stranger In The House, a song most familiar in the version Rachel Sweet did on her Fool Around LP is featured here with Clover, the group that played on Costello’s first album, My Aim Is True. The apocalyptic (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, a track that was very nearly included on the Canadian pressing of This Year’s Model instead of Radio, Radio, at last makes it on album. (It had been issued as the A side of one of the few EPs CBS records has ever issued in Canada, but disappeared quickly in 1978).
Crawling To The USA is the single representative from the album sessions that Costello and the Attractions undertook in Sydney, Australia. Nothing more has yet surfaced from those sessions but fans continue to drool at the prospect of a complete LP heldback, perhaps as a result of one of Costello’s famous temper tantrums.
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