Elvis Costello

Easy. Start with "My Aim is True" (1977). There's not a bad song on the album, but it has "Welcome to the Working Week", "Allison", "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes", "Less Than Zero" and "Watching the Detectives". It's amazing.

Rhino re-released his albums in pretty swanky special editions a few years back.

Seventies - My Aim is True
Eighties- King of America
Nineties - Juliet Letters or All This Useless Beauty
2000s - Momofuku or Secret Profane and Sugarcane

I agree with Mattioli; My Aim Is True is the way to go. Elvis Costello and the Attractions' Armed Forces (1979) and Get Happy! (1980) are also good. The aforementioned collector's editions are well worth picking up.

He's a pretty rewarding artist to go through chronologically; nothing against the Rhino special editions, but it should be noted that the reissues preceding them (done by...Demon, or something?) already have a bunch of extra tracks and are probably bargain bin priced by now.

I love This Year's Model just as much as My Aim Is True. It wouldn't be a bad starter either.

He seems to reissue his albums on a weekly basis. Get Happy was my entry point, and it's truly excellent, but This Year's Model and My Aim Is True are my favourites. Did he ever release a live album worth getting?

Armed Forces is one of my favorite albums ever in the history of the world.

Here's him doing Radio. Radio on SNL in 77. Great performance.

Definitely My Aim Is True, but I'd actually recommend Secret, Profane & Sugarcane over Momofuku. As much as I appreciate Elvis trying to rock again, he just can't touch his older stuff in that area and Sugarcane is a different style but very good.

For the 80's I recommend Spike. I'd assume it's one of his better sellers just because "Veronica" is on it, but it's also one of my favorite EC albums lyrically.

The performance that got him banned from SNL. He didn't get to come back until the 25th anniversary show when he did the song again but with the Beastie Boys.

I've never understood why that song was controversial enough to get him banned.

Rykodisc did the first substantial reissuing, and in most cases, they're probably as good (at least for non-completists) as the Rhino two-discs.

I'm more fond of This Year's Model than My Aim is True. The songs are angrier, and the Attractions are a big improvement on Clover, the American band who backed him up on the first one (and went on to form the core of Huey Lewis and the News).

Momofuku may be new, but it's not a very good starting point, I'd say. There are at least a dozen albums by him that you should get well before that*. If you want something from the 00s, get When I Was Cruel.

To answer Mark's question, see if you can find Live at the El Mocambo; it was originally released on Ryko's 2 1/2 Years box set that included the first three albums and the live one. I don't think it was ever released separately, but it's well worth tracking down - it's all songs from the first two albums, but the Attractions are on fire. The more recent My Flame Burns Blue is the only other official live album by him, I think, and it kind of sucks.

* Not even counting This Year's Model and My Aim is True, there's Imperial Bedroom, King of America, Spike, Get Happy!!, Blood and Chocolate, Juliet Letters (w/the Brodsky Quartet), Armed Forces, Trust, Mighty Like a Rose, When I Was Cruel, Brutal Youth, Painted From Memory (w/Burt Bacharach), Almost Blue (his country album), and the River in Reverse (w/Allan Toussaint). I'd put every one of these well above Momofuku, and that's not necessarily a slight on Momofuku.

This Year's Model is a perfect album. It's even got a perfect cover. If you own one Elvis album, that's the one to own. Really, his first 3 albums (My Aim is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces) are all essential, TYM is just my favorite.

The song wasn't the problem; it was that he and the band decided to play it instead of "Less Than Zero" and hadn't bothered to tell the SNL folks.

I know a lot of people who love Spike but I just never got in to it. I get the love but every time I look at it in my CD collection I have no desire to put it on. And I have no idea why.

I do love Secret, Profane, though. What a complete shift that was for him. But if you want rockers, which is what a lot of new listeners are looking for, then Momofuku is a better new album.

I think it was less a matter of how controversial it was and more a matter of agreeing to Lorne Michaels that he wouldn't play it, then stopping playing the song he had agreed to play partway through in order to play it in spite of his agreement, and throwing off the show's schedule. Of course, he was only on the show to replace the originally scheduled musical act The Sex Pistols, so one would have to think that Lorne got off pretty easy.

I did just look up information on it, and it appears Elvis was invited back in 1989. I hadn't remembered that.

I love that one, too. On top of the lyrics, it's one of his more musically adventurous albums (at least until he started experimenting with classical music to both good and ill effect). All kinds of busy, weird percussion, horns, and skronky guitars. It's kind of like a much poppier, tidier version of Tom Waits' 80s albums.

Mighty Like a Rose follows the trend and uses some of the same musicians, but the songs aren't quite as strong throughout. Still, there are some absolute essentials on there, as well ("So Like Candy," "Other Side of Summer," "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4").

Thanks, Dave. I'll definitely check that out.

Yeah, he played "Veronica" and "Let Him Dangle" from Spike, I think. Then he came back again a couple years later with the biker beard he had for the Mighty Like a Rose tour and played "The Other Side of Summer" and "So Like Candy."

Um... I really like Costello.

It also has a beautiful cover. Unfortunately, it has some very weak songs where his experimentation didn't pay off. There are some songs on Spike that took a while to grow on me, and there are songs on Rose that I know in all certainty will never grow on me.

God what an underrated song. His voice is just nasty in that song too. I need to give Spike a listen, it's been a while.

I hear ya, brother.

You can close the thread now. DaveB arrived.

I agree with Roffle -- Elvis is one of the greats to plow through chronologically. My Aim Is True/This Year's Model/Armed Forces/Get Happy! is one of the great runs by any act.

Wow, I'm late to the party. Shows what happens when I don't check in regularly.

Costello's been one of my favorite performers (and probably my wife's very favorite) for years (I first saw him at Hollywood High School, in '78), and you guys spared me starting a companion thread to my (never completed) Richard Thompson logorrhea. I've probably seen him more times than any other artist (last time was at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival a year or so ago, and I think I figured out it was show #24 of his that I'd seen).

Not much to add to the recommendations I've seen here, but as for live material, I second Dave's suggestion of the Live at El Mocambo (with the mild caveat that keyboardist Steve Nieve was under the weather, and replaced by Rumour guitarist Martin Belmont, so the sound is rather different from what we'd come to expect).

Nine tracks from that Hollywood High Show I saw are featured on the bonus disk reissue of Armed Forces (the Rhino one, I think-- I'm starting to lose track of all his reissues/repackages at this point), and they really are prime Attractions. There's also a very nice bonus live disk on one of the King of America reissues.

(I can't resist. I'll skip covers and repackages)

After the first three:

Get Happy! 1980: It's Elvis and Nick Lowe's idea of Stax/Volt sound, and at the time was one of the longest pop music LP's ever released. Standouts: "High Fidelity", "Man Called Uncle", "New Amsterdam", "Riot Act." I'd regard it as essential.

Trust 1981: I adore "Clubland", which opens the album. It's the first of his albums that doesn't have a coherent production "sound" to it, and a lot of it has a nicely rough quality to it. But the material is spotty. Also recommended "Lovers Walk" and his duet with Glenn Tillbrook on "From A Whisper To A Scream."

Imperial Bedroom 1982: is his Sgt Pepper/Abbey Road epic, with production by old Beatle engineer Geoff Emerick, and an album that gets overlooked, probably because it did seem to be setting its bar so high at the time. While it does work as an integrated whole, in a better world, "Man Out of Time" and "Tears Before Bedtime" would have been hit singles, and "Almost Blue" would have got into Sinatra's hands, as Elvis intended.

(more to come)

Nothing new to add but to echo starting with My Aim Is True and This Year's Model. I'm also a huge fan of Mighty Like a Rose, as my first Elvis Costello exposure was him doing The Other Side Of Summer on SNL.

It made such an impression I named my son Declan MacManus

Punch The Clock 1983: Well, it got Elvis his first sort-of hit single ("Everyday I Write The Book"), but his ravenous eclecticism seems to be a little too closely hewing to the 80's faux-soul sound that was all the rage in England at the time. Way too much production and general messing-about, so that the uptempo stuff has always worked much better live than it did on the album. Still, it contains his songwriting collaboration with Robert Wyatt, "Shipbuilding," with trumpet solo by Chet Baker (who evidently found the tune almost incomprehensible), and that track is among the half-dozen best things Costello has done. Great b-side from the album: his cover of Richard Thompson's "Withered and Died", which I know finally turned up on a collection somewhere. Definitely an album to save for later.

Goodbye Cruel World 1984: which Elvis cheerfully calls his "worst record" on one of the liner note reissues is, like Trust, a kind of grab-bag. The best vocal performance is on a cover ("I Wanna Be Loved"), and the best songwriting ("The Comedians" and "The Great Unknown") are somewhat let down by the arrangements. It also features a supremely goofy video for "The Only Flame in Town." This album was also the "Goodbye" to The Attractions, who stopped being his regular backing band after this. See Punch The Clock.

(post-Attractions to come)

I'd say this one and maybe King of America feature Costello's most brilliant lyrical imagery and rhymes, too. The wordplay just rolls right off his tongue. I'm not saying it's necessarily his lyrical best, since the first few albums are unequaled in terms of sharp put-downs and he regularly writes lyrics that take entire songs to make their point (like on "I Want You").

But Imperial Bedroom starts with this barrage of words and pretty much keeps it going to the end:

I tried to name my son Declan. My wife would have none of it.

I only recently started trying out Costello. I enjoyed Blood And Chocolate but My Aim Is True and This years Model are fantastic. Still have much more to go.

The Rhino This Year's Model has some good live stuff - I like his slow burn take on The Damned's "Neat Neat Neat".

Re: Chet Baker not getting the lyrics to "Shipbuiding", well, can you blame him? Elvis isn't always the most direct of lyricists; "Shipbuilding" I understand because the backstory behind that song is so well known, but there's plenty of times where I have no idea what he's going on about, though there's almost always some striking imagery to make up for it. He's a master at stringing words together, even when the final results don't make much sense in a literalist fashion.

Beyond Belief is the greatest Elvis Costello song. Except maybe Green Shirt. Listen to DaveB. This Years Model, Armed Forces, Imperial Bedroom are all perfect albums.

I personally don't like the way My Aim is True sounds, but I think that's my problem.

His songwriting gradually stops holding my interest, but I do think Might Like a Rose is very underrated.

There's plenty of people who don't dig My Aim Is True - more of a roots rock sound in that one as opposed to the straight up New Wave of the next two albums.

First time I heard Costello was a college radio station playing "Blame It On Cain", and I thought it was a new Graham Parker song. So, yeah, there's a decided shift from that pub-rock approach to the farfisa beat of This Year's Model.

As for Baker and "Shipbuliding," I don't know how he felt about the lyrics, but his comment about the music was "I can't play this. This isn't jazz."

It's a pretty great solo, anyway!

I also think Costello gets underrated as a vocalist - very expressive, and he's been honing his technique a lot in more recent years. When I Was Cruel is a good showcase for that; "Sleepless Nights", his contribuition to Return Of The Grievous Angel (best tribute album ever?) is another. And I'd even throw in "She", despite it being a pretty unadventurous cover of a schmaltzy Charles Aznavour (who I have a lot of patience for) song.

I love the way you use the phrase "who I have a lot of patience for" and I'm probably going to steal it.

It wasn't, but it is being reissued next month.

On Letterman RIGHT NOW.

On Willie Nelson's new album collection of various odds and sods, there's a live recording of Declan and the Missus joining Willie on "Crazy." There's no question that Elvis' country phrasing has improved markedly since "Stranger in the House" or "Good Year For The Roses."

*sets DVR* Ah, the advantages of living on the West Coast...

Yeah, EC didn't think it made much sense to play "Less Than Zero", a song about fascist parties in the UK at the time, to an American audience.

On the SNL 25th anniversary show he interrupted the Beastie Boys as they were beginning "Sabotage" and they re-enacted the whole event pretty wonderfully.

I like to imagine that when the Beastie Boys retire they will consider that night one of their career highlights

'It's just you and me now, cause I threw away the gin'

I wanna give a little more love to Blood and Chocolate and especially King of America which I think might be his strongest album lyrically. Little Palaces and Suit of Lights are particularly great. 'It's the force of habit/If it moves then you fuck it, if it doesn't then you stab it'. Also love his take on 'Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood'. As for Blood and Chocolate, Battered Old Bird is an epic and Home is Anywhere You Hang Your Head is gorgeous, but Poor Napoleon is my personal favorite. 'Someday they'll probably make a movie out of all of this/There won't even have to be a murder, just a slow dissolve and kiss'. Fuck yeah. That slut Allison can never be forgiven.

Also love the Attractions as a band. Costello's guitar is so minimalist that Bruce Thomas tends to drive the melody on bass while Steve Nieve pulls swirls of psychedelia from his keys and Pete Thomas hits hard and precise. Admittedly I'm much less fond of Costello post-Attractions.

That brings up an interesting point. Costello occasionally got some flack early on for being a bit misogynist, and I don't think it's a hard case to make if you take his songs on a literal "everything I'm singing is exactly how I feel" level. But I think it becomes increasingly clear throughout the 80s that his most odious, unforgiving narrators are not him at all, and the women are most often probably not the awful, cheating caricatures they're made out to be.

"I Want You" drives that point home graphically; that narrator's one of the creepiest fuckers in rock lyric history. It's amazing to see Costello get into that character's head when he plays it live.

And it's not just his phrasing, but his overall range, too. It's amazing to think the guy who did "Welcome to the Working Week" is now capable of belting out "Taking My Life in Your Hands," "I Still Have That Other Girl," or "The River in Reverse" (for some reason, cross-genre collaborations bring out the vocal showboat in Costello, which is seldom a bad thing).

My fave Costello for years has been Brutal Youth. Pony St. is just a fun fucking ride. After that, I picked up This Years Model and haven't stopped playing that. great stuff. But yeah, Brutal Youth is the shit.

Uhm, I dunno, couldn't this case be made for any artist ever? I mean you either buy the "I sing what I feel maaaaaan" ethos or you don't, all narrators in songs are characters to me.

EDIT: Ok rereading yer posts I suppose another way of putting it would be to say that he's fond of using unreliable narrators? I can go with that though I do think most of his angriest songs are supposed to be cathartic, and as such still very much sympathetic towards the narrator.