Elvis Costello

His first three albums are legend. Start there. DaveB., hopefully will chime in ,but I like his collaborations with Paul McCartney (Flowers In The Dirt/ Spike). I wish he was more popular, 'cuz the guy is such a cool genius!

I just picked up Momofuku yesterday and I planned on listening to it this afternoon so I may be visiting this thread again this evening.

Favorites:
My Aim is True.
This Year's Model.
Armed Forces.
Get Happy!!
(skipping ahead slightly) the equally impressive Imperial Bedroom.

Any of those five, which are all pretty early in his career (always a good starting point). My Aim is True probably has his best known songs (besides "Veronica" - his McCartney collab - and "Pump it Up").

I love the Spike-era stuff, too.

I'm assuming Costello's hitting the up-tempo rock stuff on this tour, since he's playing with the Imposters and opening for the Police. I agree that the first three are good starting points, but I give This Year's Model the edge over both My Aim is True (This Year's Model is his first with the Attractions, so the performances are better) and Armed Forces (though it's a nice mix of the energy of his earlier work and some of the more experimental stuff he'd hit in the next few years).

Other up-tempo highlights are the gritty and underrated late 80s Attractions album, Blood and Chocolate, and the first album with the Imposters (the Attractions with a new bassist), When I Was Cruel. The frenetic, Motown-inflected Get Happy! is also very good, but almost more of an exercise in style than songwriting.

There are a number of other good-to-great Attractions albums roughly in his original, upbeat pop style, but I think I hit the best of the bunch. His new one, Momofuku, is decent, but not the best starting point.

When it comes to more experimental stuff, it becomes more a matter of personal taste. Imperial Bedroom, one of my favorites, has a lush, baroque pop feel and it features some of Costello's best lyric writing. King of America, another classic, was his first non-Attractions album since My Aim Is True and features an arsenal of ace session players playing a mix of bouncy blues and country and classic pop with more of an acoustic emphasis. Spike and Mighty Like a Rose may be his sonically weirdest albums with skronky guitars and drum loops mixing with solid, Beatles-esque compositions - Spike is the better of the two, but "So Like Candy," "Couldn't Call It Unexpected #4," and "The Other Side of Summer" from Mightly Like a Rose are pretty essential. Spike may be his single most varied disc, though - it might not be that bad a starting point.

Beyond that, things get even more love-it-or-hate-it. One of my favorites is the Juliet Letters, a collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet, but some Costello fans can't warm up to him in a voice/string quartet setting. I also think his collaboration with Burt Bacharach is quite good, but it depends on your tolerance for both all-melancholy-all-the-time and the syrupy arrangements Bacharach is known for.

I don't care that much for The Delivery Man, EC's recent attempt at Americana, and I outright can't stand North - but if you're a Diana Krall fan, you might like it. It's an album of straightforward piano ballads that almost seems like an attempt to impress his new wife. It's practically devoid of the wordplay, experimentation, and cynicism that he's generally known for.

I think the only major Costello album I don't own is Goodbye, Cruel World, an album even Costello, himself, doesn't really like. I think it's safe to say you should probably stay away from that one.

That's not bad, I mean you really would have a hard time to make a bad greatest hits out of Elvis Costello songs (unless you included a bunch of Goodbye Cruel World stuff, an album whose liner notes include a note from MacManus himself that reads, "Congratulations! You just bought the worst album of my career.")

I'm more of an album man myself (as opposed to greatest hits). So you can imagine how difficult it was for me to dig into Bob Dylan's body of work strictly adhering to studio LPs alone. I wanted to do the stuff justice and boy did it paid off. It just took fucking-for-EVAH.

Yeah, and it's at a higher quality. I downloaded some Can the other day at 320kbps. Amazon's a much better deal, and the availability as opposed to iTunes is staggering. The problem is I get so many iTunes giftcards that it'd be wasteful not to shop there too.

Hey, DaveB. (big fan!)-do you like the latest remasters. I've heard said you don't get as much high end compared to the previous. (if true, part of a now common, annoying trend!)

Amen to that, I saw both Genesis and The Police in the last year or so, and The Police was a fun show but they were corpses compared to Genesis, which was the most fun I've ever had at a big concert.

To be honest, I haven't bothered. Costello's one of my favorite musicians from a strictly artistic standpoint, and one of my least favorite from a business standpoint. I think we're now on the third set of full catalog re-releases, and the second set (the Rhino double-disc bunch) was only completed a few years ago. A couple of the albums I have are original releases, a few are the Rykodisc bunch with a bunch of bonus tracks, and a lot are from the Rhino set, with the original album and bonus tracks separated by disc. The differences in sound have always been relatively negligible - they've always sounded pretty good on CD - at least since Rykodisc had the catalog.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the newest re-releases have fewer actual demos and rare tracks than the Rhino versions, but append a separate era-specific concert to the package. Since the albums have sounded just fine for years, I'm not sure what the point of yet another re-mastering is, aside from cash-in. If the intent was to make the live material available, it would have been considerably less sleazy to just put the concerts out separately.

All that said, some of the Rhino releases were absolutely worth the money. For instance, Kojak Variety is kind of a crappy album on its own, but the bonus disc has a full album of countrified covers that Costello made with the intent that George Jones would record them, plus a number of additional covers on top of that.

I saw the Police back in July and they were great. However I have a friend who saw both and said that Genesis pretty much sucked. He said they were a huge disappointment.

Back to Elvis. As well as My Aim Is True, I also recommend Blood and Chocolate, just for "I Want You" alone. If I remember correctly, that album was pretty viscious. I haven't listened to it in years.

Yeah, my info is hearsay. Costello is one of those artists I admire, but haven't delved all the way into. (Sort of like what Andrew was saying, I don't consider myself a fan untill/unless I have all or most of the artist's work)I have the 2001 ( I think) Rhino version of MY AIM IS TRUE. As for the new remasters, live bonus tracks aside, it would suck if they were over-compressed. You used to be able to count on the latest being the greatest-not anymore. The Led Zep MOTHERSHIP collection sounds awful!

Well they totally mangled and fucked up De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da and turned it into this slow, wishy washy lounge-esque version.

Maybe it was just the copy my friend made of it that I listened to, but those CDs were really fucking loud. I mean Jesus, we have volume knobs don't we? There's no need to mangle the quality with all that clipping just to compete with today's loudness.

I have that Led Zep anthology box though so there's no need to bother with each compilation. I bought the Costello reissues since I didn't have most of them on CD or vinyl to begin with, they were mostly rips. I don't have them all, but I have what I need.

Speaking of vinyl, The Stage Names and Favourite Worst Nightmare sound way better on record than they do on CD. The former is richer and the latter turned that loud-ass volume down. I still buy vinyl like it matters.

I think for the most part I'd have to echo DaveB's recommendations (though I've significantly warmed up to The Delivery Man these days).

My first Elvis album was All This Useless Beauty...which didn't convince me to delve into his catalog (though I suppose I like it fine now, esp. "I Want to Vanish"). But years later When I Was Cruel made me change my mind, and I ended up buying everything (mostly the Rhino reissues). Even Goodbye Cruel World (which has some nice songs buried underneath the actual recordings...for instance, the slower, sparse demo for The Comedians is infinitely better than the jumpy album version, and makes me wonder what the hell Elvis was thinking).

I think the remasters that Fat Elvis was talking about are currently only available for My Aim is True and This Year's Model (both of which have some outtakes on the first disc and a second disc devoted to a full show). You probably have the Rhino versions (one disc for the original album and a second disc devoted to outtakes).

It's confusing and annoying.

Yeah, the Stage Names sounds terrific on vinyl. Plus, you get a coupon for free downloads, so there's really no downside in terms of portability.

Those are the two I picked up. The Rhino versions I have for only two others, so yeah. This senseless double-dipping just confuses the marketplace, especially when things are tweaked only slightly (especially Elvis, Presley not Costello). Or like Morrissey, who compiles his work more than he actually records albums.

On a side-note, Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear 2008 Hip-O release is actually the best double-dip I've picked up in a long time. Actually, all of the Gaye re-releases have been pretty stellar.

I saw The Police on one of their first dates and they were fantastic if rusty. They're coming back again, and I bought tickets but this time it's mostly because I want to see Elvis.

I have a number of his albums, but I still bought that compilation because it makes for a good CD for the car (sue me, my car doesn't have MP3 capability). I personally didn't get into him until Spike, but I have a lot of love for that album still. I wouldn't think that's a bad starting point even though it is kind of all over the map like DaveB mentions. His early albums definitely have a more consistent sound to them.

Well, I went to the show on Saturday. The Police honestly seem bored with their reunion tour already. I don't know if I was reading into it or just comparing it with a much higher energy show last time they were here but they just weren't impressive (although my wife enjoyed it quite a bit).

Elvis, however, was amazing. Almost all upbeat stuff, 3 from his new album, the duet with Sting on Allison (Elvis went out of his way to give Sting room on that song and it worked really well), and a generally very high energy performance where Elvis looked to be having a great time especially on Watching the Detectives.

He played Everyday I Write the Book which surprised me, but I looked it up later to find out that was 1 of his only 2 top 40 singles. He introduced the band and said goodnight as if the show was over, and then promptly launched into a blistering Radio, Radio which flowed without pause into a blistering (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love and Understanding?. All in all I couldn't have been happier with his performance or the set list, other than wishing he could have played longer.