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Sometimes sneering, always bespectacled and seemingly indifferent to contemporary music trends, Elvis Costello is a particularly intimidating artist.
His fans aren't the most welcoming lot, either, a crew of opinionated music geeks who agree only on the fact that his first five albums were consistently excellent.
Further complicating matters is Costello's muse. He's recorded with a string quartet, an opera singer, pop classicist Burt Bacharach and New Orleans veteran Allen Toussaint, with whom he has an album due later this year. When he comes to Houston's Jones Hall at 7 p.m. Thursday, he'll be backed by the Houston Symphony, but not as some heavy-metal washout trying to microwave second life into cold stuff from his musical platter. The symphony will open with Il Sogno (The Dream), Costello's classical score to a dance company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, before backing him on a reimagined collection of his pop-minded fare.
The best way to peeve Costello purists is to offer an assertive ranking of his music. So take this as one guy's user-friendly guide through Costello's long, winding career that, three decades along, shows no signs of slowing down.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a better first five studio records (six if you count his production on the Pogues' Rum, Sodomy & The Lash) by any musician than Costello's My Aim Is True (1977), This Year's Model (1978), Armed Forces (1979), Get Happy!! (1980) and Trust (1981). Aim is notable for the great, oft-played gems "Alison" and "Watching the Detectives," but This Year's is loaded, a model whose allure lasted much longer than a single year. ("No Action"'s chorus sticks like molasses.) Call these albums New Wave, but they still sound like nuts-and-bolts rock 'n' roll. Start here.
If hooked, proceed immediately to Imperial Bedroom (1982). Bedroom is a mean-spirited record lyrically, but its lush, Beatlesesque arrangements make it slyly sinister.
Aside from the strong consensus about the preceding six albums, Costello fans squabble. I have two next-tier favorites, both reunions with his band the Attractions.
"Pony St.," the opener on Brutal Youth (1994), rocks a bunch, "Kinder Murder" follows a great wah-wah guitar and rubbery vocal, "Rocking Horse Road" is odd and one of his best smoldering cuts, and "Just About Glad" should've been a pop hit. There also are some fine ballads ("You Tripped at Every Step") and his most blistering rant in years, "20% Amnesia."
Blood & Chocolate (1986) has even more snarl than Imperial Bedroom, and the arrangements (in a reunion with the Attractions) fit snugly. This one has angry devotees.
Some place King of America (1986) in the Top 5. It's a Top 10 lock for sure, a rootsy effort that includes "Big Mistake."
Rather than dancing around like a middle-aged twit, Costello entered his 50s with dignity intact. He still plugs in and cuts loose from time to time, but the live album My Flame Burns Blue (2006) finds him in fine pop/torch mode. New takes on some familiar songs make this one a bit warmer than North (2003), a fine album of new originals with a comparable tone.
Even better for the grown-up Costello fan is Painted From Memory (1998), his collaboration with Bacharach and perhaps the first time I realized he was an amazing singer. His nasal warble more than holds its own against Bacharach's booming arrangements.
Pop fans will likely be leery of Costello's classical forays: The Juliet Letters (1993), a pretty album recorded with the Brodsky Quartet; For the Stars (2001); and the recent Il Sogno (2004). Stars is my favorite of these, with Costello and Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter finding some gleeful common ground in a well-chosen set of pop songs composed by Costello, Tom Waits, Brian Wilson and others.
Punch the Clock (1983) and Goodbye Cruel World (1984) represent one of two slumps. Clock boasts "Everyday I Write the Book," and Cruel World has "Room With No Number"; both are enduring songs.
Spike (1989) includes the great Paul McCartney collaboration "Veronica" (one of his two radio hits on this side of the pond). Mighty Like a Rose (1991) opens with the shuffling "The Other Side of Summer," but its McCartney collaborations aren't as magical.
Of course, feel free to set your own path. The symphonic format removes some of his great songs from their overromanticized original contexts. The lyrics and melodies, always strong with him, rise above historical commentary about whether a particular album was too country, too glossy or too mean.
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