This Year's Model (1978/1993)

(Also this.)

I guess it took me 15 years to fix on This Year's Model as Elvis Costello's best album and my stone favorite by him. That's partly because for many years there Costello pumped out product, fine product, like a crazy man, a regular dot-matrix printing machine churning through the reams. So I had good reasons for setting this album aside—Armed Forces, Get Happy!!, Taking Liberties, other stray singles, etc. As it turned out, however, This Year's Model improved immeasurably with the 1993 Rykodisc CD, which with a few deft moves and additions clarified so much. There always were version problems with this one. The original UK release had "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" and "Night Rally" instead of "Radio, Radio," likely the biggest difference between the two, and for me a huge one. So I am happy settling for that year's model—1993—over the original which I knew.

Elvis Costello & the Attractions, "Man Out of Time" (1982)

(listen)

"Man Out of Time" is one more gorgeous mess buried between the vaporizing screams in the middle of Imperial Bedroom, an album that I recall reviewed as Elvis Costello's "Cole Porter album" (or "George Gershwin," or "Tin Pan Alley"). It was also dissed contrarian-wise by Robert Christgau in a year when it stormed to the head of the annual Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll. Maybe Christgau was right—not sure who would be willing to go full-throated on it anymore. It always struck me if anything as more Costello's shot at Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road (Parke Puterbaugh got that right in Rolling Stone)—because of the choice of producer Geoff Emerick, who engineered those Beatles albums, but also because of its ambition and how studio-focused and tricked-up it can be. It was the first Costello album that seemed to require study (and they all did for me after this). I remain suspicious of this self-training to like things—"you have to listen to it a few times, man"—but at any rate the judgment stuck. "Man Out of Time" still seems a terrific wounded cry of the soul, absolutely stunning at about the time of the title phrase, and definitely recommended for singing along. The words are typically fussy and cute: "'Cos the high heel he used to be has been ground down / And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around," for example. It doesn't say that much and the attention to the foot-related activities is distracting and beside the point. But whatever, he gets a pass because his pop instincts remain so true. I really am not sure what this song is about, but it's obvious it comes from a profoundly felt place, one I naturally feel and respond to. That's good enough for me.

57. Kristen Vigard, "God Give Me Strength" (1996)

(listen)

I wish I knew more about the contractual terms of this—my impression is they must be pretty tight, not to say positively draconian. Illeana Douglas lip-synchs to it in a key scene from the movie Grace of My Heart (a gem worth tracking down), and that's the last you're ever going to hear of it practically for the rest of your life. Co-written by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, the (inferior) Costello vocal version of it plays over the end credits and appears exclusively on the soundtrack, notwithstanding that it's the one scene and not the credits crawl that's memorable. There was no YouTube then, but there is now, so you can go visit the clip whenever you like for the full-on effect. Me, there's something inside that has to possess, so I did a little detective work and found that the version I want lives on a cheesy compilation from 1999 called Love Scene: Romantic Movie Music (with songs from other movies like Sleepless in Seattle, Stealing Beauty, and The Commitments). Vigard, a soaps player and lifetime back-bencher, recorded another version in 2004 on her album God, Loves and Angels, which is ... not the original. My connection to this song, and this version, is all about the movie from which it comes, its story and that particular scene. Vigard's performance is exactly right, just tentative and plain enough to sound reasonably like a demo or audition knocked off in the moment, but with strong undercurrents and flashes of emotion that power it and strike hard. Douglas isn't singing, but she's playing it off equally exactly right, so maybe the best way to hear it is in the YouTube clip, and skip tracking down the album which I did all the work of doing for you. Better yet, see the whole movie. It's a thing of beauty.

80. Elvis Costello & the Attractions, "From Head to Toe" (1982)

(listen)

At one point in my life I decided I wanted to be a collector, and then I decided that I wanted to collect Elvis Costello product. As you can imagine it was almost immediately an overwhelming chore. Few artists are at once so prolific and so willing to release countless alternative versions and packages from market to market and year to year. I gave it up pretty quickly. But it's how I came to know this gem, a cover of a Smokey Robinson Going to a Go-Go song stripped down to an impossibly bouncy essence that bursts with up-tempo charm and never overstays its welcome. I wore out the single, which significantly compromised the value of my investment. That must have been when I figured out I'm not cut out to be a collector, as much as I love to prowl for treasure. I see here that the tune essentially existed only as the single until it was anthologized on a couple of compilations (The History of Rock, Vol. 39 in 1986 and a Costello collection, Out of Our Idiot, in 1987), before finally finding a home on Rykodisc and Rhino reissues of Imperial Bedroom. It doesn't particularly belong there, even if the time frame is right. I would be more inclined to slot it with Get Happy!!, but I'm not really sure it belongs anywhere. It's in love with itself for being in love with itself and somehow makes that as good a reason as any to stick around for the two and a half minutes. As with so many Costello numbers with his house band, Steve Nieve's piano is a feature attraction, sparkling all through. But it's probably the infectious enthusiasm of Costello himself attacking the vocals that's as responsible as anything for putting it over. The guy just loves music and it's evident in every little thing he does.

Spike (1989)

Elvis Costello's final dispatch from the '80s was every bit as sad as the two that had preceded it by three years. Sadder, if that's possible. Life must have been dealing him a lot of lemons. As it happens, it was dealing me lemons as well, so I found something here that was at once intimately familiar and yet foreign and strange, seductive and off-putting too. With this set of some 15 songs, Costello, aka God's Comic, retreated so far into his Britishness that one song, an instrumental performed by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band called "Stalin Malone," does not even require words. Why bother? Just cursory glances at this and other titles give hint of the agenda here: "Let Him Dangle," "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," "Tramp the Dirt Down," "Satellite," "Any King's Shilling," "Last Boat Leaving." Listen closely and you can hear the sound of a soul chilling to rigor. Play it in the background and—you can't. As temperate and considered as all the music stubbornly sounds on close examination, it's not music that will recede with any grace. It will only go away if you turn it off. Otherwise it is the glum world of God's Comic, where humiliation and cuckoldry are the order of the day and "despair" is just another word for nothing left to say. I think it's humorous that this was Costello's idea of putting his best foot forward for a new label, Warner Bros., having left Columbia. I guess the singles are there if you want to look—"Veronica," a Paul McCartney collaboration, which even made the U.S. top 20, his best ever on this side (and one of many interesting such collaborations Costello has taken on, starting approximately here in his long career, but not one of the better ones). For me, it's in for a penny in for a pound—if it's going to be dark, let's make it coal black, as on, for example, "Tramp the Dirt Down," which is about a visit he envisions to the grave of someone who has not yet died even now, 21 years later, Margaret Thatcher. He can't wait for her death to happen, you see. I know that feeling, or something like it, though mine are related more to localized political figures of the United States or others altogether than anything to do with British politics. In my mind, that's just there for the universality. After all, Costello takes nearly all of six minutes to consider the Thatcher graveside matter closely, which is perhaps above and beyond by anyone's measure of civility. Bitter, I'm trying to say. Very, very bitter.

Blood & Chocolate (1986)

I said before that I have often had the feeling that Elvis Costello's two releases of this year were intended to offer a choice. If that's the case, this is mine. It's not the first but it is the last of his albums, to date, that has grabbed me immediately, and by the throat. No prep work required, no warm-up time necessary. I only needed to hear the first two minutes of "Uncomplicated" to get some sense of how much I was going to like it, and by the time I got to "Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head" I was already well and completely sold. There are a few arguably objective reasons to justify the choice, perhaps greatest that this proves once and for all that the Attractions are Costello's greatest accompanists. Then, too, this is more profoundly rooted in the punk-rock that provided the context for Costello's emergence in the first place. One of the most complex figures of his time and place, he has always, of course, been vastly more than a safety-pinned punk-rocker, if indeed he fits that profile at all—in terms of image and sound, the antecedents are all classic rock, Buddy Holly and Bob Dylan and the Edwardian Stones. But the fury derived from punk-rock, and few have ever done seething anger better. So if, in King of America, Costello retreated to his classicist side (which has previously served him well, perhaps best in Get Happy!! ... though perhaps served best of all in King of America), here in Blood & Chocolate he pulls to another side, the furious misanthrope—which has also previously served him well, perhaps best in This Year's Model. And, because that happens to be my favorite of all his albums, it's probably why I prefer Blood & Chocolate to King of America. Don't get me wrong. I love Get Happy!! (and King of America), and when forced to make a choice I will ultimately make the one I have already made: both. Don't give me either/or, give me "both." But across the dusty years, I have surely spent hours and hours more with Blood & Chocolate—it always waits there for me, ready to go. Push play. The band is thick and walloping and if Declan's mood is no better than on King of America, he opts here for sarcastic and bitter than for self-pitying and sullen and despondent, and that has made all the difference. Obviously these were not the best of times for him, but just as obviously he reached deep, in the case of both albums, to produce the kind of work that's worth spending a lifetime, all of a long lifetime, living with and occupying. Not every day. But there as needed.

King of America (1986)

I've always felt that the two 1986 albums from Elvis Costello, following a fallow period for him of a few years, represented a kind of choice. Whether he intended it that way is less clear. But in any event either one of them, let alone the two of them together, certainly represented a return to form for him in blazing fashion. This one, true to its title, harks self-consciously to his enduring American sources (even as it excoriates American culture), country and soul and rhythm and blues, along with, as Robert Christgau remarked, "a bunch of studio pros Steve Stills himself could get behind": leveraging the services of such enduring landmark figures as T-Bone Burnett, who produced, along with studio sidemen James Burton (always the first Elvis's first choice for guitar), Earl Palmer, Ray Brown, Jim Keltner, Ralph Carney, David Hidalgo, Mitchell Froom, etc., etc. An all-star cast, in other words, for cognoscenti of mid-century American popular music; you can look 'em up. Costello, for his part, parades around in the credits as Declan MacManus, his given name, as Elvis Costello, the stage name he came to realize with this that he was stuck with forever, and as the Little Hands of Concrete, Nick Lowe's nickname for him; the band is credited as The Costello Show (featuring Elvis Costello). All of which makes it fair enough to observe that, at the age of 30, MacManus / Costello / Concrete appeared to be suffering something of an identity crisis. But it's one that's resolved by the evident plunge here into the one thing that obviously bears most meaning for him, the kind of wordy, dark, and deeply felt music that has sustained him, and often the rest of us too, these many years. The mood throughout is almost somber, and often anguished, which all in itself makes it one of his bravest efforts. If I'm going to carp about anything—and I hesitate to, given how satisfying this can be, and how perfectly suited to certain temperaments of mood—it's the familiar complaint of mine that, as with much of his later material, this requires a bit more study than I care for before it starts to give up its finest treasures, i.e., "you need to listen to it a few times before you can really get into it, man." I suppose that's just me and/or my obtuseness and/or laziness, and as I say, I'm not about to deny this is one of the very best in his entire catalog, certainly top 10 ... or is, anyway, when I'm in the right mood for it, which requires some patience and prolonged exposure if I've let too much time get away from me.

Imperial Bedroom (1982)

At which point all agreement about Elvis Costello came to an end. Those inclined to label him with figures they perceived that he intended to ape (Buddy Holly for My Aim Is True, Bob Dylan for This Year's Model, so on and so forth) claimed Cole Porter, George Gershwin, even no less than all of Tin Pin Alley for this. Dean Robert Christgau flew in the face of the consensus of the time that this was not only good, but great, pooh-poohing that it "shores up my impression that he can be precious lyrically, vocally, and musically, and gnomic for no reason at all--in short, pretentious." Well, the rest of us liked it pretty well, although I admit this was the beginning of Elvis Costello albums that required, at least for me, a certain attitude and approach of practically reverent study. Typically, little makes sense for the first several listens, then various melodies, lyrical phrases, breaks and other kicks begin to emerge and cohere, until finally, 15 or so listens in, the gorgeous wide-screen tapestry is evident in all its splendor. For me, this experience has been fairly consistent across most of the body of his work that followed, which puts even the work I most enthusiastically endorse squarely in the camp of music I am most suspicious of – the kind you "have to listen to a few times" before their genius discloses. In other words, self-fulfilling prophecy. Even so, that's my thumb pointing straight to heaven on this one.

Get Happy!! (1980)

"Love for Tender" With this semi-alleged (and semi-denied) gesture of quasi-apology, exhaustion in Elvis Costello from the furious pace of the previous two or three years was arguably beginning to show. That was evidenced most painfully by the unduly famous 1979 encounter in a Columbus, Ohio, bar between Costello, on the one hand, and Bonnie Bramlett and Stephen Stills on the other. In the conversation, Costello reportedly referred to James Brown and Ray Charles with a nasty name that starts with "N." Bramlett and Stills ran to the press with it. Me, I never doubted that Elvis meant it only as a blow-off gesture to two sorry figures of the '60s on the downslope of their careers incapable of understanding punk-rock and all that it engendered. He was probably tired and didn't feel like talking to them. They probably didn't get the hint. So goes my take. Unfortunately the rock establishment of the time—who held Bramlett and Stills in higher esteem than Costello (looking at you, Rolling Stone)—went ahead and set the whole thing up as a public cage match between hippies and punks, too busy expressing their disdain for one another to see how much they have in common. They should have brought in Allen Ginsberg to fight for the beats and been done with it. The damage was severe. Three years later and beyond Costello, no racist, was still apologizing for it. He's probably still apologizing for it even today. This album was part and parcel of all that, intentionally or otherwise, with its many paeans to Motown, Stax, and all points soul. It's also one of his best albums, as rich and generous as anything he had released yet. Go ahead and live with it for a month or two. You won't regret.

Armed Forces (1979)

Oh, I just don't know where to begin. With this, Elvis Costello's third release in less than a year and a half, each one equally fully packed and with barely a shred of filler, the dimensions of his talent were starting to come clear. On vinyl, either side constituted a complete experience, and—not to go all cliché on you—it was like taking a roller coaster ride that followed each set of sudden dips, turns, and shrieks with, not a braking cruise back to the starting point, but another climb to greater heights. He pulled rabbits out of hats and then he pulled hats out of rabbits. Depths of reference peeled back to reveal more depths of reference, and repeated listening was rewarded with sustained and increasing pleasure. This could get to be a daily habit that lasted weeks, even months. He wasn't Buddy Holly. He wasn't Bob Dylan. Lord knows he wasn't ABBA. But he could have been all of them, parading around inside the skin of a wonky nebbish. It was impossible to guess how he was doing it. Best just to shut up and listen.

This Year's Model (1978)

You hear a lot of talk about sophomore curses, but Elvis Costello (& the Attractions) blew that to smithereens with this stunning follow-up to his promising debut, My Aim Is True. Every move of brash confidence is made good (for example, the titles; it was, and this is). It's tempting to make the comparison with Neil Young re: Crazy Horse and the Attractions. Herr Costello is simply better with his house band as the ferocious attack here first amply demonstrated. But this also exhibited songwriting chops on the first step of a stairway to heaven that would last at least another four years—and, arguably, more than ten. He lived and breathed rock 'n' roll history (the musical references to the Stones, Bob Dylan, and many more come fast and furious here), he was genuinely pissed off (about everything), and by all evidence he never slept. Just cranked out one knotty, brilliant number after the next. Get on board. This is where the fun starts.