After a week plus respite, we’re back, and with arguably the best album so far. Ditching all the bells and whistles that likely contributed to knocking the last 2 albums down a peg, Costello brings this one forth, without the Attractions, in a more stripped down affair. The results are exceptional. Stripped down doesn’t mean one sound here, as he traverses much of the American music landscape here from country to blues to folk, and all of it spot on. While I was really into Brilliant Mistake, Loveable, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, and Glitter Gulch, the entire second half of this album is where it’s at for me with Eisenhower Blues taking the prize.
Nice. Love KOA, though I will admit that "Eisenhower Blues" is my least favorite track on there.
1. This Year's Model
2. Imperial Bedroom
3. King of America
4. Trust
5. Get Happy
6. My Aim is True
7. Armed Forces
8. Punch the Clock
9. Almost Blue
10. Goodbye Cruel World
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
If you're looking to learn more about each album, EC's extensive liner notes for the reissues are a fantastic resource. They're all available in the Elvis Costello Wiki: http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... iner_notes
I love this excerpt from the KOA one:
I had originally intended to feature The Attractions on half of this album so that the contrast of accompaniments would be heard to best effect. The news of this plan was not exactly received with wild celebrations, and I suppose I became pretty high-handed about my recording plans. On all sides the old cliché about "familiarity" probably had some substance.
Anyway, by the time The Attractions arrived in Hollywood there was more than half an album's worth of material in the can. This meant that our sessions had a doomed air of suspicion and resentment. After spending so much time together on the road T-Bone and I had a rapport based on rumour that unwittingly drove a wedge between the band and myself. In these circumstances I suppose it is hardly surprising that The Attractions delivered some of their worst performances.
KOA really was the beginning of the end for the Attractions
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Throughout this journey, I have spoke about a certain buoyancy that exists in Elvis Costello’s music. Sometimes the snappy lyrics are delving deeper than the sonic atmosphere and many times they assist in defining the space, but there’s always this bounce or airiness that underpins the proceedings. On Blood and Chocolate, it seems as if that is stripped away. The delivery here feels sonically much more stark and heavy, and it works really well here. Uncomplicated sets the tone in both sound and well the title itself sets the pace for this album. Straight rock in I Hope You’re Happy Now and Tokyo Storm Warning (really enjoyed this one). Honey Are You Straight or Are You Blind and the excellent Battered Old Bird are both big highlights for me. Next Time Round closes this out in that same straight forward manner. Excellent album here for me.
Imperial Bedroom
King of America
My Aim Is True
This Year’s Model
Trust
Blood and Chocolate
Get Happy
Punch the Clock
Armed Forces
Almost Blue
Goodbye Cruel World
Yessss. B&C is excellent. It's crazy that he recorded it the same year as King of America.
I also love "Battered Old Bird," one of his best ballads I think
1. This Year's Model
2. Blood & Chocolate
3. Imperial Bedroom
4. King of America
5. Trust
6. Get Happy
7. My Aim is True
8. Armed Forces
9. Punch the Clock
10. Almost Blue
11. Goodbye Cruel World
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
I believe This Year’s Model is your best LP. Do you agree?
Every 35 days I’d agree, and on another day I’d recommend something like North, which a lot of people didn’t like, but came from the heart. The music industry prefers the orthodox to new ideas, but I’ve always tried to do something else, even at the risk of losing some of my audience.
Anders wrote:I do not have a «neoliberal assessment of geopolitics», so please stop writing that I do.
Jorge wrote:Yessss. B&C is excellent. It's crazy that he recorded it the same year as King of America.
I also love "Battered Old Bird," one of his best ballads I think
1. This Year's Model
2. Blood & Chocolate
3. Imperial Bedroom
4. King of America
5. Trust
6. Get Happy
7. My Aim is True
8. Armed Forces
9. Punch the Clock
10. Almost Blue
11. Goodbye Cruel World
Thirded on "Battered Old Bird" -- what an incredible song, with such a palpable sense of time and place to it. I love how his vocal performance goes kind of soft-spoken and mournful to almost unhinged at the end. I feel like it's the one song that kind of bridges B&C with KOA -- the storytelling has a lot in common with the songs on KOA.
B&C is an awesome album. I just love the whole vibe and feel of it -- even the minor songs really rock. Like Jorge said, it's the first of his "back to basics" albums, but I also think it introduced a harder-edged rock sound that hadn't appeared in the catalog yet -- EC's ragged guitar playing is higher in the mix, more prominent in the compositions, with some of the "new wave"-ier sounds (Nieve's keyboard leads, especially) downplayed. This is the template that he follows for other albums like this (Brutal Youth, Momofuku, etc.).
This Year's Model
Get Happy
King of America
Blood and Chocolate
Imperial Bedroom
Trust
My Aim Is True
Armed Forces
Punch the Clock
Almost Blue
Goodbye Cruel World
This post-Attractions album starts off pretty darn good with This Town and the excellent Let Him Dangle. After that though, it seems to be pretty uneven, with the quirkiness of the songs trying to make up for what otherwise feels to me like not so exceptional among an exceptional catalogue. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror is pretty good but doesn’t hold me like it should. Veronica is not that great for being the big single off this album. Chewing Gum was sort of a fun ear worm but probably a good b-side for me. Pads, Paws & Claws was a fun listen. Coal Train Robberies was enjoyable. I did enjoy Miss Macbeth, but other than noted, it’s not that noteworthy. This feels lightweight juxtaposed against just listening to Blood & Chocolate.
Imperial Bedroom
King of America
My Aim Is True
This Year’s Model
Trust
Blood and Chocolate
Get Happy
Punch the Clock
Armed Forces
Almost Blue
Spike
Goodbye Cruel World
Interesting. I am a fan of Spike's big-budget worldliness, but I agree that the songwriting is uneven. "This Town" is actually my least favorite song on it, and "Any King's Shilling" is my favorite.
Maybe it reveals itself in multiple listens but it seemed like a lot of okay songs made interesting with little effects that just kind of didn’t do it for me. Let Him Dangle was killer though.
I really enjoy Spike, but I find it's one of those albums where I'll randomly find myself in the mood to hear one or two of its songs more than I crave it as a full album experience. As a collection of songs it's a bit daunting, even though I think most of the songs on their own are pretty strong. Especially in an exercise like this, where every album so far has had something of a consistent sonic environment, probably making it a bit easier to settle in and go along for the ride, I can imagine how Spike would feel kind of herky-jerky.
That said, I love the new array of sounds and styles it introduces into EC's discography, and its try-anything-once experimentalism is something of a template for the remainder of his career, though not every album is as wide-lens as this one in terms of its dabbling. I'm looking forward to this next leg of the journey, and am really curious as to what you end up thinking of Mightly Like a Rose, an oft-maligned album I've always had a seemingly anomalous love for.
It also must be said: The intro to "Satellite," not one of Spike's stronger songs IMO, is one of the most beautiful snippets of music EC ever recorded, and will come back in a glorious way in the form of a sample that gets used on his 2013 album Wise Up Ghost.
This Year's Model
Get Happy
King of America
Blood and Chocolate
Imperial Bedroom
Trust
My Aim Is True
Spike (this is kind of a knee-jerk placement, and probably where the albums are going to start getting harder to rank)
Armed Forces
Punch the Clock
Almost Blue
Goodbye Cruel World
This album seems to have a lot in common with Spike, but at least at the start, Costello is a little less interested in curiosities and delivering some straight forward rock music in The Other Side of Summer and Hurry Down Doomsday, which takes some good twists without losing its momentum - and is my clear favorite on this one. That approach wouldn’t hold though as Costello falls back into songs that are good, but still not fully elevated by little sonic flourishes. Yet there are still some decent highlights here for me, including Harpies Bizarre, Georgie and Her Rival, and the rollicking Playboy to a Man that sort of wakes this thing up a bit. I wouldn’t place this with the caliber of The Attractions work or King of America, but it is a fine entry to his catalogue.
Imperial Bedroom
King of America
My Aim Is True
This Year’s Model
Trust
Blood and Chocolate
Get Happy
Punch the Clock
Armed Forces
Mighty Like a Rose
Almost Blue
Spike
Goodbye Cruel World
Spike is a real junk shop of styles, where despite a few obvious outliers I think Mighty Like a Rose is tied together by its lush 60's pop indulgences -- Beach Boys-esque backing vocals, horn and string arrangements, etc. The term I keep wanting to use is "baroque pop" but I don't have any idea whether that's the correct use of the phrase -- it just has this very mannered, at times kind of stuffy and highbrow sound, but it's juxtaposed against some pretty vicious lyrics. EC notes in writing about this album that even though he's early albums earned him something of a reputation as an angry young man, MLAR was probably the most pissed off he's ever been on record (not sure if that still holds true but that's how he felt in 2003 or whenever the album was reissued). "How to Be Dumb" is a tirade against Bruce Thomas, the Attractions' bassist, several of the songs in the middle of the album address Desert Storm -- it was definitely an album I appreciated more when I read about his headspace at the time and where some of the songs were coming from. But I also think that purely superficially, it contains some of his most sophisticated and well-crafted melodies (lots of examples but "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" takes the cake -- that may be my single favorite EC song from a compositional standpoint).
A few weak spots on the back end, but in my opinion this is EC's most underrated release.
This Year's Model
Get Happy
King of America
Blood and Chocolate
Imperial Bedroom
Mighty Like a Rose
Trust
My Aim Is True
Spike
Armed Forces
Punch the Clock
Almost Blue
Goodbye Cruel World
Last edited by Kevin Davis on Fri January 07, 2022 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm going to join you in listening to the Juliet Letters next -- that's always been kind of towards the bottom of my list, just because it's not really my favorite style of music, but I have a feeling that today I'm going to put it on and love it.
I made an attempt sometime last year at a full catalogue run-through (he's a guy where I know a ton of songs but few full albums), but only made it through the records I was already most familiar with (the debut through Get Happy). I decided to put on Trust last night, and it was fantastic. It doesn't seem like it's spoken about on the same level as those first records, but may be my favorite of that run besides This Year's Model.
