Elvis Costello
National Ransom
Rating: 3.8/5.0
Label: Hear Music
What is there to say about Elvis Costello that hasn't already been said? For over 30 years, critical wits have described him in various too-clever ways; he's been the Angry Young Man, Buddy Holly on Acid and the Bearded Bard, laughable depictions that may have made for good press but still say very little about the musician or his music. His discography has likewise made a mockery of such depictions; while Costello's earliest albums tentatively placed him as a post-punker whose folk tendencies were obscured by his aggressive vocal delivery and the Attractions' manic pace, his last several albums, particularly The Delivery Man and Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, have incorporated elements of jazz, country and Americana.
So it's a guess as to what side of Costello will dominate each new album; during the lead-up to listening to National Ransom, one of Spectrum Culture's writers jokingly asked if I thought it would be Rocker Costello or Wimpy-Crooner Costello. It's actually a bit of both, though the rocking isn't as hard as it could be and the crooning isn't all that wussy. Recorded quickly and including songs that have been part of Costello's recent live shows, Ransom was produced by frequent cohort and former Coward Brother T-Bone Burnett. Featuring contributions from backing bands the Imposters and the Sugarcanes, Marc Ribot, Buddy Miller, Leon Russell, Vince Gill and formerly estranged bassist Bruce Thomas (wait, never mind), the album might be Costello's most musically varied, as it genre-jumps like an ADD-addled kid.
It's a scattershot approach that mostly works well. The self-titled album opener and "Five Small Words" are classic Costello rock songs, though the equally up-tempo "The Spell That You Cast" sounds to me like a bad Brutal Youth outtake; as fun as the song is, it tends to feel every bit as slight as something like "Playboy to a Man" or "Luxembourg." There are hints of jazz in "Jimmie Standing in the Rain," a song that contains some of the album's best lines ("forgotten man/ Indifferent nation") and, with its references to "slow coaches rolling o'er the moor" and a cowboy singer "mild and bitter from tuberculosis," is presumably about Jimmie Rodgers. Steel guitar features prominently on "I Lost You," "That's Not the Part of Him You're Leaving" and "Dr. Watson, I Presume," a trio of solid songs that owe a debt to Americana/country every bit as much as Almost Blue did before them. Costello was always a folk singer of sorts at heart - a fact obscured by his pissed-off persona, surly disposition and infamous fixation with exacting revenge through his lyrics - so it's fitting that unadorned and simply-arranged songs like "All These Strangers" and "Bullets for the New-Born King" offer National Ransom's most enduring moments. An acoustic assassin's lament that consists of only Costello and acoustic guitar, "Bullets" interweaves history and geography and contains some of the album's most evocative imagery and will likely age better than some of the album's genre-specific tracks.
Like most Costello albums, the writing is exceptional, with characters like a stage-door Josephine, charlatans and princes, privateers and brigands, a double-agent girl and disgraced priest heading for some unnamed border flittering in and out of these songs. Costello's occasional bouts of verbosity sometimes rear their wordy heads, and shades of North unfortunately creep in on "You Hung the Moon," a song about a dead soldier that's ultimately wrecked by Costello's exaggeratedly theatrical vocals and strings that are laid on pretty thick, but these spots are rare. If National Ransom was a debut album from an indie band with a bizarre name we'd all say it lacks focus and lives too much in the past. But with Costello such absence of uniformity somehow works, and his latest album again confirms that he's simply an expert musician who damn well knows what he's doing, witty critical characterizations be damned.
Showing posts with label Elvis Costello. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elvis Costello. Show all posts
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Revisit: Elvis Costello - Mighty Like a Rose
spectrum culture, spectrumculture.com, it's what you need
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
Among Elvis Costello's fans and critics, Mighty Like a Rose is frequently considered one of the musician's lesser works, not quite as awful as Goodbye Cruel World and Punch the Clock but nowhere near his "supposedly irreproachable" late 1970s records, as Costello sarcastically remarked in the liner notes to Rose's Rhino reissue. In some ways this degraded standing is understandable, as the album contains several slight songs and a few others that are oddities at best. Contemporary reviews of Mighty Like a Rose were not favorable. Robert Christgau said that "...the good songs are overblown tragedies, the bad ones overblown trifles." Oddly enough, Christgau loved "Playboy to a Man" but hated "The Other Side of Summer." And there's your Dean of American Rock Critics for you. The New Musical Express complained that the albums was "willfully obscure and directionless...the music for the most part is self indulgent and sour, or lazy and glutinously sweet." Even Rolling Stone - by 1991 handing out inflated ratings at breakneck pace - panned the album: "vanished without a trace" is how that rag would later summarily dismiss the album in its Costello overview. As Costello toured in support of the album, many other myopic reviewers fixated on his heavily bearded face, exhibiting all the hallmarks of superficial and disposable rock journalism. Little wonder the album traditionally ranks very low in the Costello discography.
Yet time sometimes has a way of changing how we perceive an album and its place in an artist's canon. Mighty Like a Rose is a good example: the album's arrangements recall Costello's past work but also, and perhaps more interestingly for those who can't get past its weaker moments, hint at what the musician would attempt with varying degrees of success on his later 1990s albums. With their unconventional, swollen arrangements and use of instruments like "beaten things," "big stupid guitar," "industrial jack-ass" and "little foolish organ," songs like "Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)" and "Invasion Hit Parade" now sound like a natural, if less cumbersome, progression from the experimentalism of Spike tracks like "This Town..." and "Miss Macbeth." The influence that classical music and orchestral-worthy ballads would exert on The Juliet Letters, GBH and All This Useless Beauty is hinted at in the keyboard melody of "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" as well as the horns that dominate "Harpies Bizarre."
Despite the occasional bout of verbosity and the type of cutesy wordplay that detractors can't quite stomach, the album features some of Costello's best lyrics. Its lyrical tone is predominantly one of disgusted anger, with the singer painting an oppressively cynical view of the world. The Beach Boys send-up that Christgau loathed so much - "The Other Side of Summer" - is remarkably jaded, with its key images of the "Pop princess...Downtown shooting up" and the "Cardboard city and the unwanted birthday" standing in stark contrast to the song's candy-pop arrangement. Costello even throws in a thinly-veiled shot at John Lennon's hallowed "Imagine" for good measure. Similar in tone though far different in execution, the following songs - "Doomsday" and "How to Be Dumb" - continue Costello's ranting. "Doomsday" welcomes the end of the world amid assorted riff-raff worthy of James Ensor, with its jealous husband and the wife who "sleeps in the shirt of a late great country singer," parents cashing in on their child's "abduction" and, eh, a possible reference to Sting. "How to Be Dumb" is likewise laced with as much venom as anything from the musician's 1970s albums. Who cares if some of its shots are cheap and the song occasionally sounds like a harangue, commonly thought to be lobbed in the direction of Attractions bassist and Big Wheel pseudo-philosopher Bruce Thomas? The song still sounds like a vindictive and well-placed thumb to the eye.
No Elvis Costello album is complete without a few sordid love tales, and Mighty Like a Rose is no exception. The type of sleaziness that oozed from earlier songs like "Busy Bodies," "Possession" and "Satellite" is again reflected in the temptresses of "After the Fall" and "All Grown Up" and the scummy male of "Georgie and Her Rival." Though "After the Fall" is most notable for the mesmerizing Spanish guitar played by Tom Waits cohort Marc Ribot and "All Grown Up" finds Costello's vocals absolutely bludgeoning the song's genteel acoustic foundation, both songs are among Costello's most direct, foregoing his recurring tendency to cram too many words into impossible spaces in favor of simple lyrics that actually have room to breathe.
Certainly there are many other facets to Mighty Like a Rose that warrant consideration: its impressive list of contributors, the "agnostic prayer" of "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4," the record-scratching, long-gone lover of "So Like Candy," the absolute duds that are "Playboy to a Man" and "Sweet Pear." But mostly it's memorable for the musical risks it takes and how it hints at the subjects and styles Costello would revisit throughout the 1990s. It won't ever be regarded as one of the musician's undisputed masterpieces, but it combines enough of Costello at his most musically adventurous and lyrically savage to suggest it deserves a better standing than both critics and fans have historically given it. Those looking to understand the origins of Costello's 1990s albums should start here.
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
Among Elvis Costello's fans and critics, Mighty Like a Rose is frequently considered one of the musician's lesser works, not quite as awful as Goodbye Cruel World and Punch the Clock but nowhere near his "supposedly irreproachable" late 1970s records, as Costello sarcastically remarked in the liner notes to Rose's Rhino reissue. In some ways this degraded standing is understandable, as the album contains several slight songs and a few others that are oddities at best. Contemporary reviews of Mighty Like a Rose were not favorable. Robert Christgau said that "...the good songs are overblown tragedies, the bad ones overblown trifles." Oddly enough, Christgau loved "Playboy to a Man" but hated "The Other Side of Summer." And there's your Dean of American Rock Critics for you. The New Musical Express complained that the albums was "willfully obscure and directionless...the music for the most part is self indulgent and sour, or lazy and glutinously sweet." Even Rolling Stone - by 1991 handing out inflated ratings at breakneck pace - panned the album: "vanished without a trace" is how that rag would later summarily dismiss the album in its Costello overview. As Costello toured in support of the album, many other myopic reviewers fixated on his heavily bearded face, exhibiting all the hallmarks of superficial and disposable rock journalism. Little wonder the album traditionally ranks very low in the Costello discography.
Yet time sometimes has a way of changing how we perceive an album and its place in an artist's canon. Mighty Like a Rose is a good example: the album's arrangements recall Costello's past work but also, and perhaps more interestingly for those who can't get past its weaker moments, hint at what the musician would attempt with varying degrees of success on his later 1990s albums. With their unconventional, swollen arrangements and use of instruments like "beaten things," "big stupid guitar," "industrial jack-ass" and "little foolish organ," songs like "Hurry Down Doomsday (The Bugs Are Taking Over)" and "Invasion Hit Parade" now sound like a natural, if less cumbersome, progression from the experimentalism of Spike tracks like "This Town..." and "Miss Macbeth." The influence that classical music and orchestral-worthy ballads would exert on The Juliet Letters, GBH and All This Useless Beauty is hinted at in the keyboard melody of "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4" as well as the horns that dominate "Harpies Bizarre."
Despite the occasional bout of verbosity and the type of cutesy wordplay that detractors can't quite stomach, the album features some of Costello's best lyrics. Its lyrical tone is predominantly one of disgusted anger, with the singer painting an oppressively cynical view of the world. The Beach Boys send-up that Christgau loathed so much - "The Other Side of Summer" - is remarkably jaded, with its key images of the "Pop princess...Downtown shooting up" and the "Cardboard city and the unwanted birthday" standing in stark contrast to the song's candy-pop arrangement. Costello even throws in a thinly-veiled shot at John Lennon's hallowed "Imagine" for good measure. Similar in tone though far different in execution, the following songs - "Doomsday" and "How to Be Dumb" - continue Costello's ranting. "Doomsday" welcomes the end of the world amid assorted riff-raff worthy of James Ensor, with its jealous husband and the wife who "sleeps in the shirt of a late great country singer," parents cashing in on their child's "abduction" and, eh, a possible reference to Sting. "How to Be Dumb" is likewise laced with as much venom as anything from the musician's 1970s albums. Who cares if some of its shots are cheap and the song occasionally sounds like a harangue, commonly thought to be lobbed in the direction of Attractions bassist and Big Wheel pseudo-philosopher Bruce Thomas? The song still sounds like a vindictive and well-placed thumb to the eye.
No Elvis Costello album is complete without a few sordid love tales, and Mighty Like a Rose is no exception. The type of sleaziness that oozed from earlier songs like "Busy Bodies," "Possession" and "Satellite" is again reflected in the temptresses of "After the Fall" and "All Grown Up" and the scummy male of "Georgie and Her Rival." Though "After the Fall" is most notable for the mesmerizing Spanish guitar played by Tom Waits cohort Marc Ribot and "All Grown Up" finds Costello's vocals absolutely bludgeoning the song's genteel acoustic foundation, both songs are among Costello's most direct, foregoing his recurring tendency to cram too many words into impossible spaces in favor of simple lyrics that actually have room to breathe.
Certainly there are many other facets to Mighty Like a Rose that warrant consideration: its impressive list of contributors, the "agnostic prayer" of "Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4," the record-scratching, long-gone lover of "So Like Candy," the absolute duds that are "Playboy to a Man" and "Sweet Pear." But mostly it's memorable for the musical risks it takes and how it hints at the subjects and styles Costello would revisit throughout the 1990s. It won't ever be regarded as one of the musician's undisputed masterpieces, but it combines enough of Costello at his most musically adventurous and lyrically savage to suggest it deserves a better standing than both critics and fans have historically given it. Those looking to understand the origins of Costello's 1990s albums should start here.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Revisit: Elvis Costello - Spike (Demo Version)
go read everything at spectrumculture.com
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
Spike is either Elvis Costello's most ambitiously experimental or self-conscious and overindulgent album. Released in 1989 as the musician's Warner Bros. debut - the start of a relationship that would eventually become as contentious and vengeful as one of Costello's songs - the album received a lukewarm critical reception, as numerous critics blasted its musical excesses and alleged lack of lyrical focus and direction. Although he never explicitly agreed with such critiques, even Costello has subsequently acknowledged the record's eccentricities, commenting in the liner notes of the 2001 Rhino reissue that he had the blueprints for five albums in his head and apparently decided to make all of them at once.
If the album still sounds occasionally bloated and over-saturated with instrumentation, the demo versions included in that Rhino reissue offer a fascinating contrast in how Spike's songs are structured and how such embellishments can alter a listener's perceptions of the songs. Eleven of Spike's 15 tracks are presented in demo form, with "Any King's Shilling" being the only notable exclusion. Stripped of the various studio enhancements that still remain the album's most recognizable characteristic, these demos showcase Costello in a solo setting, with only a guitar, occasional keyboards and backing vocals used to flesh out the songs.
The superficial difference is of course obvious: the demos are rougher and - perhaps most importantly - more organic than their crafted and polished album counterparts. Less apparent is how the demo versions transform both the listener's expectations and the album's personality; whereas the official version places an emphasis on the songs' elaborate arrangements and production techniques, the stripped-down demo versions instead force the listener to focus on Costello's lyrics. Indeed, many contemporary reviewers, struggling to figure out just what the hell was going on musically in these songs, only gave cursory mention of the songs' content. Several of the demo versions can be described as social or topical songs, while many others examine the type of sentimental and sordid topics that have appeared in Costello's work for decades, with the contrasting aspects of devotion and infidelity appearing in nearly equal parts.
Though some of Spike's politically-themed songs might have been lost on American audiences - the story that forms the basis of the thinly-veiled anti-capital punishment screed "Let Him Dangle" still isn't exactly well known across the ocean, while "Coal-Train Robberies" is limited by a specific geography - the album contains Costello's angriest and most accessible "protest" song. Costello had a working draft of the anti-Thatcher song "Tramp the Dirt Down" since at least 1985, performing an early incarnation of it at the 1985 Miner's Benefit, before finally committing it to Spike. If the album version is notable for its fury and anger, the demo actually goes further: Costello spits the lyrics out with disgust and rage, a single guitar framing his vocals and no extraneous instrumentation to distract listeners from the song's confrontational tone and razor-sharp lyrical barbs.
Most of the other demos are far more introspective. A sense of the past and familial commitment frames a pair of songs that find Costello at his most affectionate, even if the darkness and tragedy of these songs is impossible to ignore. Free of any excessive layers of instrumentation, images of devotion and attachment can be found throughout "Veronica" (written about Costello's grandmother and her declining mental health) and "Last Boat Leaving" (also inspired by Costello's family history). Costello's vocals make the latter song far more ominous than its Spike counterpart: the narrator forebodingly tells his son that he'll "ever reach the shore" and will likely be forgotten: "When you go to school, son, you'll read my story in history books/ Only they won't mention my name."
Other tracks are far less devotional and the characters much less dignified. Like any good Costello album there's a fair amount of filth and sleaze here, and the famous Costello sneer remains on full display throughout the demos. "...This Town..." presents the stories of a slimy piano player who hits the keys like he was "pawing a dirty book" and a woman who trades blow jobs for stock. The peep show tragi-comedy "Satellite" features a cheating couple whom Costello presents with a mixture of derision and sympathy. It's obvious early on that the affair is fleeting: both conspirators - the intoxicated female for whom "Champagne rolls off her tongue like a second language" and her admirer who undresses her in his mind - are clearly amateurs at such games of deception. By the time the mess has ended, the most the pair can salvage is that "Now they both know what it's like/ Inside a pornographer's trousers." Whereas the album version moves with almost a grand orchestral feel to it, the demo's minimal instrumentation and Costello's vocal delivery fit the subject matter and tone better.
Costello knows full well there are at least two sides to any tale when relationships are involved - a separate article could be written about "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," the album's most complex and nuanced song - and Spike addresses these various sides with both compassion and cynicism. Certainly it's a tough sell arguing that a set of imperfect and informal demos with little instrumentation surpasses a finished product that contains contributions from Mark Ribot, T-Bone Burnett, Michael Blair and Allen Toussaint, among others, but in the case of Spike, that is exactly the case. The original album's strengths and flaws are both inextricably linked, as the album's unconventional styles and arrangements make the songs frequently cluttered and impenetrable, with some of Costello's most pointed, biting and humorous songwriting overlooked as a result. In retrospect the demos hold up much better than their polished album counterparts: their simplicity and sparseness are what make them so fascinating and far superior to the actual album in many respects.
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
Spike is either Elvis Costello's most ambitiously experimental or self-conscious and overindulgent album. Released in 1989 as the musician's Warner Bros. debut - the start of a relationship that would eventually become as contentious and vengeful as one of Costello's songs - the album received a lukewarm critical reception, as numerous critics blasted its musical excesses and alleged lack of lyrical focus and direction. Although he never explicitly agreed with such critiques, even Costello has subsequently acknowledged the record's eccentricities, commenting in the liner notes of the 2001 Rhino reissue that he had the blueprints for five albums in his head and apparently decided to make all of them at once.
If the album still sounds occasionally bloated and over-saturated with instrumentation, the demo versions included in that Rhino reissue offer a fascinating contrast in how Spike's songs are structured and how such embellishments can alter a listener's perceptions of the songs. Eleven of Spike's 15 tracks are presented in demo form, with "Any King's Shilling" being the only notable exclusion. Stripped of the various studio enhancements that still remain the album's most recognizable characteristic, these demos showcase Costello in a solo setting, with only a guitar, occasional keyboards and backing vocals used to flesh out the songs.
The superficial difference is of course obvious: the demos are rougher and - perhaps most importantly - more organic than their crafted and polished album counterparts. Less apparent is how the demo versions transform both the listener's expectations and the album's personality; whereas the official version places an emphasis on the songs' elaborate arrangements and production techniques, the stripped-down demo versions instead force the listener to focus on Costello's lyrics. Indeed, many contemporary reviewers, struggling to figure out just what the hell was going on musically in these songs, only gave cursory mention of the songs' content. Several of the demo versions can be described as social or topical songs, while many others examine the type of sentimental and sordid topics that have appeared in Costello's work for decades, with the contrasting aspects of devotion and infidelity appearing in nearly equal parts.
Though some of Spike's politically-themed songs might have been lost on American audiences - the story that forms the basis of the thinly-veiled anti-capital punishment screed "Let Him Dangle" still isn't exactly well known across the ocean, while "Coal-Train Robberies" is limited by a specific geography - the album contains Costello's angriest and most accessible "protest" song. Costello had a working draft of the anti-Thatcher song "Tramp the Dirt Down" since at least 1985, performing an early incarnation of it at the 1985 Miner's Benefit, before finally committing it to Spike. If the album version is notable for its fury and anger, the demo actually goes further: Costello spits the lyrics out with disgust and rage, a single guitar framing his vocals and no extraneous instrumentation to distract listeners from the song's confrontational tone and razor-sharp lyrical barbs.
Most of the other demos are far more introspective. A sense of the past and familial commitment frames a pair of songs that find Costello at his most affectionate, even if the darkness and tragedy of these songs is impossible to ignore. Free of any excessive layers of instrumentation, images of devotion and attachment can be found throughout "Veronica" (written about Costello's grandmother and her declining mental health) and "Last Boat Leaving" (also inspired by Costello's family history). Costello's vocals make the latter song far more ominous than its Spike counterpart: the narrator forebodingly tells his son that he'll "ever reach the shore" and will likely be forgotten: "When you go to school, son, you'll read my story in history books/ Only they won't mention my name."
Other tracks are far less devotional and the characters much less dignified. Like any good Costello album there's a fair amount of filth and sleaze here, and the famous Costello sneer remains on full display throughout the demos. "...This Town..." presents the stories of a slimy piano player who hits the keys like he was "pawing a dirty book" and a woman who trades blow jobs for stock. The peep show tragi-comedy "Satellite" features a cheating couple whom Costello presents with a mixture of derision and sympathy. It's obvious early on that the affair is fleeting: both conspirators - the intoxicated female for whom "Champagne rolls off her tongue like a second language" and her admirer who undresses her in his mind - are clearly amateurs at such games of deception. By the time the mess has ended, the most the pair can salvage is that "Now they both know what it's like/ Inside a pornographer's trousers." Whereas the album version moves with almost a grand orchestral feel to it, the demo's minimal instrumentation and Costello's vocal delivery fit the subject matter and tone better.
Costello knows full well there are at least two sides to any tale when relationships are involved - a separate article could be written about "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," the album's most complex and nuanced song - and Spike addresses these various sides with both compassion and cynicism. Certainly it's a tough sell arguing that a set of imperfect and informal demos with little instrumentation surpasses a finished product that contains contributions from Mark Ribot, T-Bone Burnett, Michael Blair and Allen Toussaint, among others, but in the case of Spike, that is exactly the case. The original album's strengths and flaws are both inextricably linked, as the album's unconventional styles and arrangements make the songs frequently cluttered and impenetrable, with some of Costello's most pointed, biting and humorous songwriting overlooked as a result. In retrospect the demos hold up much better than their polished album counterparts: their simplicity and sparseness are what make them so fascinating and far superior to the actual album in many respects.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Elvis Costello: Live at the El Mocambo
spectrumculture.com
The Elvis Costello reissue machine continues to hum along relentlessly. After the Rykodisc reissues of 1993-1995 did a serviceable job in re-examining Costello's back catalog, these were eventually bested by Rhino's stunning series, which, to use the technical term, kicked major ass. With their classy packaging, carefully considered artwork and humorous, honest and revealing Costello-penned liner notes, this collection of outtakes, live cuts, alternate versions and failed experiments appeared to be the final word on all things Costello. Not so fast. Since then, the artist's work has been repackaged several times over, in products ranging from interesting to entirely pointless. While another release of both My Aim Is True and This Year's Model from Hip-O each included a second disc with a live show - in addition to a plethora of bland outtakes, forgettable demos and other travesties - they at least offered something not previously commercially available. Other efforts, such as a pricey box set of singles and another pressing of the musician's studio albums, have been less forgivable, especially in an era where CD sales continue to plummet and music has been effectively reduced to little more than pieces of digital data.
Hip-O's reissue of Live at the El Mocambo will likely do nothing to change the skeptical minds of fans who have long since dismissed such artifacts as little more than mercenary cash grabs. While the performance is amazing, this release offers nothing new and too often plays like just another thoughtless, recycled rehash from a label short on both new ideas and any real interest in giving fans something of merit. Though Hip-O is quick to point out that the concert was previously only available in limited quantities as a promo album and later as part of the 2 ½ Years box set, this recording is about as difficult to track down as a right-wing health care reform reactionary; the El Mocambo show is perhaps Costello and the Attractions' most bootlegged concert. This latest repackaged dud shows the complete lack of imagination, creativity, and bang-for-your-buck that we've all, unfortunately, come to expect from music labels.
Enough has been written about the El Mocambo performance to render additional commentary redundant; suffice it to say that it's a defining moment in the group's history. At the least, this reissue confirms that the show's reputation as among the foursome's best is well-deserved. The tentativeness that crept into the group in late 1977 shows- check out the Nashville Rooms concert included in the MAIT deluxe edition for a band struggling to mesh- is long gone here, with Costello spitting out various barbed insults, insinuations and put-downs while Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas add musical venom to the mix. It's simply the sound of four guys with a jaw-dropping set of songs and the right chemistry- of a few different kinds, I'd guess.
One of the charms about this tape has always been its roughness. Costello's voice occasionally dominates the mix as the singer practically swallows the microphone in a rush to spit out various accusations and insults, most noticeably on "Mystery Dance," "Welcome to the Working Week" and "Miracle Man," while the Attractions' instruments alternately complement each other and fight for supremacy. The crowd remains wired and idiotically vocal for most of the show, while Costello engages in the requisite but mostly mild audience baiting (though his tone becomes fairly malevolent right before the band deconstructs "Pump It Up" with the help of Martin Belmont). A common shortcoming of any live disc is that it lacks a visual element, but a definite sense of atmosphere is palpable here: the crowd's amped-up disposition lasts for the show's duration (the infamous "yeehaw" concertgoer who yelps throughout and who, perhaps appropriately, makes his presence most known during "Less Than Zero," is still audible). While there is no appreciable difference in sound quality (maybe it's a little louder) on this release versus that of either its 2 ½ Years or bootleg predecessors, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Yet a scintillating performance and decent packaging job (Look, kids! Pictures!) aren't enough to justify the reissue's complete lack of bonus material. There's simply no incentive for fans who already own this record to purchase it again: four songs performed with Belmont and Nick Lowe are excluded, and there are no soundchecks, interviews, or, Christ, songs from the following night's show at the same club to make the package more attractive. With the June 1978 Hollywood High concert - parts of which were already included in Rhino's Armed Forces version - reportedly next up for release, Hip-O needs to move beyond simply repackaging previously released performances and start rewarding Costello's fans for their patience and patronage, many of whom are likely developing nervous tics at that very mention of the word reissue. A wealth of vintage Costello and the Attractions shows circulate on bootleg, and if done right, this ongoing live concert campaign could provide plenty of treats for long-time fans as well as those who only know Costello as the twitchy weirdo from the Austin Powers movie.
And so the latest iteration of Live at the El Mocambo is simply another underwhelming and useless Costello reissue, of which it's hard not to conclude that Hip-O either has no real clue what music fans look for in a reissue or isn't particularly interested in finding out. Whether a listener has heard this show before or not isn't the point: there is a way to accommodate both lifers and newbies and make both feel like a record label isn't roughly shaking their pockets out like a goon squad street tough. While this 1978 performance belongs on any list of essential post-punk live shows, Hip-O's uninspired release is ultimately a failed hatchet job. It's about as attractive as sea amoeba - though it's worth noting that, unlike this release, sea amoeba serves a purpose - and suggests listeners better have low expectations for future entries in "The Costello Show."
The Elvis Costello reissue machine continues to hum along relentlessly. After the Rykodisc reissues of 1993-1995 did a serviceable job in re-examining Costello's back catalog, these were eventually bested by Rhino's stunning series, which, to use the technical term, kicked major ass. With their classy packaging, carefully considered artwork and humorous, honest and revealing Costello-penned liner notes, this collection of outtakes, live cuts, alternate versions and failed experiments appeared to be the final word on all things Costello. Not so fast. Since then, the artist's work has been repackaged several times over, in products ranging from interesting to entirely pointless. While another release of both My Aim Is True and This Year's Model from Hip-O each included a second disc with a live show - in addition to a plethora of bland outtakes, forgettable demos and other travesties - they at least offered something not previously commercially available. Other efforts, such as a pricey box set of singles and another pressing of the musician's studio albums, have been less forgivable, especially in an era where CD sales continue to plummet and music has been effectively reduced to little more than pieces of digital data.
Hip-O's reissue of Live at the El Mocambo will likely do nothing to change the skeptical minds of fans who have long since dismissed such artifacts as little more than mercenary cash grabs. While the performance is amazing, this release offers nothing new and too often plays like just another thoughtless, recycled rehash from a label short on both new ideas and any real interest in giving fans something of merit. Though Hip-O is quick to point out that the concert was previously only available in limited quantities as a promo album and later as part of the 2 ½ Years box set, this recording is about as difficult to track down as a right-wing health care reform reactionary; the El Mocambo show is perhaps Costello and the Attractions' most bootlegged concert. This latest repackaged dud shows the complete lack of imagination, creativity, and bang-for-your-buck that we've all, unfortunately, come to expect from music labels.
Enough has been written about the El Mocambo performance to render additional commentary redundant; suffice it to say that it's a defining moment in the group's history. At the least, this reissue confirms that the show's reputation as among the foursome's best is well-deserved. The tentativeness that crept into the group in late 1977 shows- check out the Nashville Rooms concert included in the MAIT deluxe edition for a band struggling to mesh- is long gone here, with Costello spitting out various barbed insults, insinuations and put-downs while Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas add musical venom to the mix. It's simply the sound of four guys with a jaw-dropping set of songs and the right chemistry- of a few different kinds, I'd guess.
One of the charms about this tape has always been its roughness. Costello's voice occasionally dominates the mix as the singer practically swallows the microphone in a rush to spit out various accusations and insults, most noticeably on "Mystery Dance," "Welcome to the Working Week" and "Miracle Man," while the Attractions' instruments alternately complement each other and fight for supremacy. The crowd remains wired and idiotically vocal for most of the show, while Costello engages in the requisite but mostly mild audience baiting (though his tone becomes fairly malevolent right before the band deconstructs "Pump It Up" with the help of Martin Belmont). A common shortcoming of any live disc is that it lacks a visual element, but a definite sense of atmosphere is palpable here: the crowd's amped-up disposition lasts for the show's duration (the infamous "yeehaw" concertgoer who yelps throughout and who, perhaps appropriately, makes his presence most known during "Less Than Zero," is still audible). While there is no appreciable difference in sound quality (maybe it's a little louder) on this release versus that of either its 2 ½ Years or bootleg predecessors, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Yet a scintillating performance and decent packaging job (Look, kids! Pictures!) aren't enough to justify the reissue's complete lack of bonus material. There's simply no incentive for fans who already own this record to purchase it again: four songs performed with Belmont and Nick Lowe are excluded, and there are no soundchecks, interviews, or, Christ, songs from the following night's show at the same club to make the package more attractive. With the June 1978 Hollywood High concert - parts of which were already included in Rhino's Armed Forces version - reportedly next up for release, Hip-O needs to move beyond simply repackaging previously released performances and start rewarding Costello's fans for their patience and patronage, many of whom are likely developing nervous tics at that very mention of the word reissue. A wealth of vintage Costello and the Attractions shows circulate on bootleg, and if done right, this ongoing live concert campaign could provide plenty of treats for long-time fans as well as those who only know Costello as the twitchy weirdo from the Austin Powers movie.
And so the latest iteration of Live at the El Mocambo is simply another underwhelming and useless Costello reissue, of which it's hard not to conclude that Hip-O either has no real clue what music fans look for in a reissue or isn't particularly interested in finding out. Whether a listener has heard this show before or not isn't the point: there is a way to accommodate both lifers and newbies and make both feel like a record label isn't roughly shaking their pockets out like a goon squad street tough. While this 1978 performance belongs on any list of essential post-punk live shows, Hip-O's uninspired release is ultimately a failed hatchet job. It's about as attractive as sea amoeba - though it's worth noting that, unlike this release, sea amoeba serves a purpose - and suggests listeners better have low expectations for future entries in "The Costello Show."
Friday, April 17, 2009
Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Universal Lending Pavilion, Denver, CO, 7/16/03
go see the full article of best concerts of this decade at spectrumculture.com
I had a perfect view as Elvis Costello stormed off the stage, practically in mid-song. I also seem to recall him throwing down his guitar in either righteous frustration or rock star snit, but maybe that's just my memory messing with me. The crowd, living it up on a hot July night in Denver just a few moments before, became disconcertingly quiet. Even the Imposters - drummer Pete Thomas, keyboardist Steve Nieve, and bassist Davey Faragher - seemed momentarily stunned, leaving the stage as the house lights came on.
It was less than an hour into the show, and I began to feel like a bigger schmuck than Bruce Thomas. Having driven nearly 14 hours from St. Louis - including a lifetime spent driving across the hell on earth known as Kansas - it looked like another brutal trek across that depressing monotonous terrain was imminent. After several tense minutes of boos mixed with cheers mixed with more boos, Costello and the band returned and played one of the most aggressive, loud and supremely pissed off concerts I've ever seen.
Up to this point the show had been solid enough, with Costello and the band going through tight versions of then-recent songs like "I Hope You're Happy Now" and "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)" as well as songs for the elders like "Radio Radio" and "Clubland." Yet after this brief delay the show devolved into a whole other beast. "Man Out Of Time" was played at triple speed, with an extended guitar workout during which Costello broke a guitar string but kept flailing away. "Less Than Zero" and "45" were given similar harsh treatments, with Costello and the band not even bothering to pause between songs. "Uncomplicated" featured that classic Costello snarl and was matched by the band's insistent playing; I still remember how Thomas' drums sounded like they were being played inside my skull. The Nick Lowe-penned closing song "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" brought everything to a raucous close; the Imposters have played that song repeatedly throughout this decade, but never has it sounded as raw and unhinged as it did this night.
Though the concert, and indeed the atmosphere in which it occurred, were far removed from Costello's late 1970s glory days, it remains one of the few shows I'd consider flawless. It was an exciting and unpredictable stomp through Costello's back catalog, with most songs played with a sense of purpose and conviction. Nearly every song sounded like it was being played live exactly the way it was meant to be played, making other versions (from that particular tour at least) seem polite and overly refined.
People go to concerts for a variety of reasons - the need to drink excessively and dance a moronic jig or two, a night away from those bastard kids at home, or as some sort of twisted fanboy obsession. But mostly it's because concertgoers want a night to remember; if transcendence is involved, so much the better. I'm still not sure why Costello stomped off the stage in Denver, and I don't really care. Regardless, what followed afterward was the best Costello and the Imposters concert I've seen - and I've seen enough of their shows to warrant psychological analysis - as well as the most thrilling concert I attended this decade.
I had a perfect view as Elvis Costello stormed off the stage, practically in mid-song. I also seem to recall him throwing down his guitar in either righteous frustration or rock star snit, but maybe that's just my memory messing with me. The crowd, living it up on a hot July night in Denver just a few moments before, became disconcertingly quiet. Even the Imposters - drummer Pete Thomas, keyboardist Steve Nieve, and bassist Davey Faragher - seemed momentarily stunned, leaving the stage as the house lights came on.
It was less than an hour into the show, and I began to feel like a bigger schmuck than Bruce Thomas. Having driven nearly 14 hours from St. Louis - including a lifetime spent driving across the hell on earth known as Kansas - it looked like another brutal trek across that depressing monotonous terrain was imminent. After several tense minutes of boos mixed with cheers mixed with more boos, Costello and the band returned and played one of the most aggressive, loud and supremely pissed off concerts I've ever seen.
Up to this point the show had been solid enough, with Costello and the band going through tight versions of then-recent songs like "I Hope You're Happy Now" and "Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution)" as well as songs for the elders like "Radio Radio" and "Clubland." Yet after this brief delay the show devolved into a whole other beast. "Man Out Of Time" was played at triple speed, with an extended guitar workout during which Costello broke a guitar string but kept flailing away. "Less Than Zero" and "45" were given similar harsh treatments, with Costello and the band not even bothering to pause between songs. "Uncomplicated" featured that classic Costello snarl and was matched by the band's insistent playing; I still remember how Thomas' drums sounded like they were being played inside my skull. The Nick Lowe-penned closing song "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?" brought everything to a raucous close; the Imposters have played that song repeatedly throughout this decade, but never has it sounded as raw and unhinged as it did this night.
Though the concert, and indeed the atmosphere in which it occurred, were far removed from Costello's late 1970s glory days, it remains one of the few shows I'd consider flawless. It was an exciting and unpredictable stomp through Costello's back catalog, with most songs played with a sense of purpose and conviction. Nearly every song sounded like it was being played live exactly the way it was meant to be played, making other versions (from that particular tour at least) seem polite and overly refined.
People go to concerts for a variety of reasons - the need to drink excessively and dance a moronic jig or two, a night away from those bastard kids at home, or as some sort of twisted fanboy obsession. But mostly it's because concertgoers want a night to remember; if transcendence is involved, so much the better. I'm still not sure why Costello stomped off the stage in Denver, and I don't really care. Regardless, what followed afterward was the best Costello and the Imposters concert I've seen - and I've seen enough of their shows to warrant psychological analysis - as well as the most thrilling concert I attended this decade.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Revisit: Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Brutal Youth
Originally published at spectrumculture.com
Let's get the obvious out of the way first: there are some irredeemable duds on Brutal Youth. Indeed, several songs are horrifically awful and have rightly earned their place with anything from Goodbye Cruel World and Punch the Clock as among the worst of Elvis Costello's career. "Clown Strike" wanders in no particular direction and is just downright bizarre, "Still Too Soon To Know" is among the sappiest songs Costello has recorded this side of jazz groaner North, and "My Science Fiction Twin"...well, the less said about it the better.
That self-editing would have improved Brutal Youth really isn't debatable; many contemporary reviews of the album rightly zeroed in on these excesses. Robert Christgau, never at a loss for snide words, dismissed the album as "fussy as Streisand, ugly as sin, touched with grace," All Music Guide said that it "lacks guts, no matter how smugly secure it is in its tempered 'experimentation,' and Rolling Stone...ah shit, like today, no one really cared what Rolling Stone said in 1994. Still, nearly 15 years after its original release date the album has aged far better than what those initial reviews would have suggested. It very often sports all the trademarks of Costello's best work: caustic and biting lyrics, insistent arrangements of guitars/drums/keyboards and a few well-placed pokes to the eye of various hapless targets.
Brutal Youth marked the first Elvis Costello and the Attractions album since Blood and Chocolate, though calling it that is a stretch: Nick Lowe played bass on more songs than Bruce Thomas. That the bassist, who landed on Costello's shit list when he violated an apparent code of omerta when his agonizingly dull and monotonous book The Big Wheel was published, contributed his talents to only a handful of songs was often missed in contemporary reviews. Predictably enough, Warner Bros. - always on the cutting edge of inventive marketing - hyped the album as the triumphant return of Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Whether this approach helped or hindered the album's reception is debatable.
The album is roughly split between up-tempo songs that mostly adhere to the Attractions playbook and slower tunes that emphasize melody and sparse instrumentation over that band's carnival racket; Costello's somewhat-wussy balladeer side would eventually be more fully realized on next album All This Useless Beauty. Like many other Costello albums, a parade of hypocrites, shysters, liars, cheaters, fools, criminals, shady men and slutty women makes up the cast of these songs. Several songs focus on domestic matters: humorous opening track "Pony Street" finds a daughter "reading Das Kapital" and watching videos of her cross-dressing father while trying to curb her mother's increasingly bizarre behavior, "You Tripped At Every Step" promises an unseemly marital squabble, and "Rocking Horse Road" evokes suburban boredom and regret, with its protagonist looking backwards at least one relationship he badly botched. Closing track "Favourite Hour" is perhaps the album's standout moment. Described by Costello as being about "the terrible anticipation of a dread event" in the liner notes to the Rhino reissue version, it features him playing the piano and contains one of the musician's best and most understated melodies.
Other songs drip with the venom, spite and disgust that Costello is best known for, even though this depiction is by now largely inaccurate. We can all thank a questionable dalliance with Burt Bacharach for that. "All the Rage" includes a wonderful rolling piano and boasts a litany of insults, especially in the terse request to "spare me the drone of your advice." "Just About Glad" sounds like a harder-edged companion piece to this song, with Costello taunting the song's subject with a snotty question of "Is that a tear in your eye?" Similar verbal jabs are thrown at the woman "discovered wearing last night's dress" in "Sulky Girl," which contains a tight arrangement and some of Pete Thomas' best drumming on the record. There's no concern or sympathy to be found here; with her dyed hair and phony name, she's primarily shown as an object of derision. Other songs are more sordid. "13 Steps Lead Down" is rather ragged and mines the familiar theme of temptation - in this case the dual vices of sex and alcohol - that appears throughout Costello's catalog. With their procession of drunkards and delinquents, killers and phony alibis, a palpable sense of disgust and anger runs through the frenetic "20% Amnesia" and "Kinder Murder."
Like most artists who have received a significant amount of critical plaudits and pans over the course of a lengthy career, Elvis Costello's later work is frequently judged against his classic early albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model and Get Happy!. Still, such an approach sells Brutal Youth far short. While it doesn't stack up to those early albums, it has aged very well and incorporates the best elements of Costello's music - an uneasy balance between harmony and abrasiveness, lyrics that stick like knives, and a sense of humor that can be equally cruel and comforting.
Let's get the obvious out of the way first: there are some irredeemable duds on Brutal Youth. Indeed, several songs are horrifically awful and have rightly earned their place with anything from Goodbye Cruel World and Punch the Clock as among the worst of Elvis Costello's career. "Clown Strike" wanders in no particular direction and is just downright bizarre, "Still Too Soon To Know" is among the sappiest songs Costello has recorded this side of jazz groaner North, and "My Science Fiction Twin"...well, the less said about it the better.
That self-editing would have improved Brutal Youth really isn't debatable; many contemporary reviews of the album rightly zeroed in on these excesses. Robert Christgau, never at a loss for snide words, dismissed the album as "fussy as Streisand, ugly as sin, touched with grace," All Music Guide said that it "lacks guts, no matter how smugly secure it is in its tempered 'experimentation,' and Rolling Stone...ah shit, like today, no one really cared what Rolling Stone said in 1994. Still, nearly 15 years after its original release date the album has aged far better than what those initial reviews would have suggested. It very often sports all the trademarks of Costello's best work: caustic and biting lyrics, insistent arrangements of guitars/drums/keyboards and a few well-placed pokes to the eye of various hapless targets.
Brutal Youth marked the first Elvis Costello and the Attractions album since Blood and Chocolate, though calling it that is a stretch: Nick Lowe played bass on more songs than Bruce Thomas. That the bassist, who landed on Costello's shit list when he violated an apparent code of omerta when his agonizingly dull and monotonous book The Big Wheel was published, contributed his talents to only a handful of songs was often missed in contemporary reviews. Predictably enough, Warner Bros. - always on the cutting edge of inventive marketing - hyped the album as the triumphant return of Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Whether this approach helped or hindered the album's reception is debatable.
The album is roughly split between up-tempo songs that mostly adhere to the Attractions playbook and slower tunes that emphasize melody and sparse instrumentation over that band's carnival racket; Costello's somewhat-wussy balladeer side would eventually be more fully realized on next album All This Useless Beauty. Like many other Costello albums, a parade of hypocrites, shysters, liars, cheaters, fools, criminals, shady men and slutty women makes up the cast of these songs. Several songs focus on domestic matters: humorous opening track "Pony Street" finds a daughter "reading Das Kapital" and watching videos of her cross-dressing father while trying to curb her mother's increasingly bizarre behavior, "You Tripped At Every Step" promises an unseemly marital squabble, and "Rocking Horse Road" evokes suburban boredom and regret, with its protagonist looking backwards at least one relationship he badly botched. Closing track "Favourite Hour" is perhaps the album's standout moment. Described by Costello as being about "the terrible anticipation of a dread event" in the liner notes to the Rhino reissue version, it features him playing the piano and contains one of the musician's best and most understated melodies.
Other songs drip with the venom, spite and disgust that Costello is best known for, even though this depiction is by now largely inaccurate. We can all thank a questionable dalliance with Burt Bacharach for that. "All the Rage" includes a wonderful rolling piano and boasts a litany of insults, especially in the terse request to "spare me the drone of your advice." "Just About Glad" sounds like a harder-edged companion piece to this song, with Costello taunting the song's subject with a snotty question of "Is that a tear in your eye?" Similar verbal jabs are thrown at the woman "discovered wearing last night's dress" in "Sulky Girl," which contains a tight arrangement and some of Pete Thomas' best drumming on the record. There's no concern or sympathy to be found here; with her dyed hair and phony name, she's primarily shown as an object of derision. Other songs are more sordid. "13 Steps Lead Down" is rather ragged and mines the familiar theme of temptation - in this case the dual vices of sex and alcohol - that appears throughout Costello's catalog. With their procession of drunkards and delinquents, killers and phony alibis, a palpable sense of disgust and anger runs through the frenetic "20% Amnesia" and "Kinder Murder."
Like most artists who have received a significant amount of critical plaudits and pans over the course of a lengthy career, Elvis Costello's later work is frequently judged against his classic early albums like My Aim Is True, This Year's Model and Get Happy!. Still, such an approach sells Brutal Youth far short. While it doesn't stack up to those early albums, it has aged very well and incorporates the best elements of Costello's music - an uneasy balance between harmony and abrasiveness, lyrics that stick like knives, and a sense of humor that can be equally cruel and comforting.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Music Review: Charlie Louvin - Steps to Heaven
Here’s hoping we’re all doing as well as Charlie Louvin by the time we reach the age of 81, instead of slobbering into our beers, boring the pants off strangers with exaggerated tales of our glory days, and fighting off senility. A recent surge of activity that would put much younger musicians to shame has seen Louvin tour with Lucinda Williams, appear at the Bonnaroo and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festivals, and the release of 2007’s Charlie Louvin (when you’ve been recording since the Truman administration, I suppose you eventually run out of album titles). With contributions from Jeff Tweedy, Elvis Costello, and Will Oldham, many critics rightly went batshit crazy for that album.
Though this resurgence probably won’t make Louvin a household name – the bulk of his audience will likely remain the more hardcore music history buffs and fellow musicians – it has certainly led to increased critical and media attention for the performer.Louvin’s Steps to Heaven is the first of two albums for the Alabama-born musician planned for release in 2008. Consisting of traditional gospel tunes, as well two Louvin Brothers originals, the album was produced by Mark Nevers and features a three sister strong gospel choir, Derrick Lee on piano, and Chris Scruggs on bass and electric guitar.
The risk any religious album runs is being excessively preachy or dogmatic, and thus turning off secular listeners by discounting the music in an attempt to spread a very specific message (similar to a truly heinous Christian rock album or even Bob Dylan’s Saved and Shot of Love debacles). Thankfully, Louvin’s album doesn’t have this particular character flaw; listeners who agree with every word as well as those who can quote The God Delusion from memory will both likely enjoy the album.
In many ways the album is reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings releases. Like the best moments of those albums, Louvin’s voice, ranging from weary and ragged to powerful and confident, is perhaps Steps’ most striking and immediate feature. His voice carries the weight of a lifetime of experience with it; coupled with Nevers’ warm production and the band’s contributions, the songs take on a certain immediacy and impact that might not exist if sung by a younger musician or played in a different arrangement.
Many of the songs strongly evoke an acceptance of mortality without any fear of death; the promise of an afterlife runs through the songs. As interpreted by Louvin, these traditional songs are meant to offer comfort; standout interpretations of “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be” and “If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven” are perhaps the clearest expressions of this theme. This overtly religious theme is explored in depth without becoming overbearing; still, any listener needing a quick hit of songs about humankind’s ultimate demise can give Tom Waits’ Bone Machine a spin as needed.
Yet the album does have some drawbacks. Most noticeably, sometimes the background singing drowns out Louvin’s voice or is occasionally overwrought and affected. “There’s a Higher Power” and “Where We’ll Never Grow Old” are the most egregious offenders.Despite these few missteps, Charlie Louvin’s Steps to Heaven is an excellent release. The production is warm and clean, the musicianship is spot-on, and Louvin’s voice evokes a world of emotions and textures. Though it’s an album rooted in a very specific faith and set of beliefs, it doesn’t attempt to force such beliefs on the listener. It’s a worthy entry in Louvin’s varied and lengthy career.
Though this resurgence probably won’t make Louvin a household name – the bulk of his audience will likely remain the more hardcore music history buffs and fellow musicians – it has certainly led to increased critical and media attention for the performer.Louvin’s Steps to Heaven is the first of two albums for the Alabama-born musician planned for release in 2008. Consisting of traditional gospel tunes, as well two Louvin Brothers originals, the album was produced by Mark Nevers and features a three sister strong gospel choir, Derrick Lee on piano, and Chris Scruggs on bass and electric guitar.
The risk any religious album runs is being excessively preachy or dogmatic, and thus turning off secular listeners by discounting the music in an attempt to spread a very specific message (similar to a truly heinous Christian rock album or even Bob Dylan’s Saved and Shot of Love debacles). Thankfully, Louvin’s album doesn’t have this particular character flaw; listeners who agree with every word as well as those who can quote The God Delusion from memory will both likely enjoy the album.
In many ways the album is reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings releases. Like the best moments of those albums, Louvin’s voice, ranging from weary and ragged to powerful and confident, is perhaps Steps’ most striking and immediate feature. His voice carries the weight of a lifetime of experience with it; coupled with Nevers’ warm production and the band’s contributions, the songs take on a certain immediacy and impact that might not exist if sung by a younger musician or played in a different arrangement.
Many of the songs strongly evoke an acceptance of mortality without any fear of death; the promise of an afterlife runs through the songs. As interpreted by Louvin, these traditional songs are meant to offer comfort; standout interpretations of “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be” and “If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven” are perhaps the clearest expressions of this theme. This overtly religious theme is explored in depth without becoming overbearing; still, any listener needing a quick hit of songs about humankind’s ultimate demise can give Tom Waits’ Bone Machine a spin as needed.
Yet the album does have some drawbacks. Most noticeably, sometimes the background singing drowns out Louvin’s voice or is occasionally overwrought and affected. “There’s a Higher Power” and “Where We’ll Never Grow Old” are the most egregious offenders.Despite these few missteps, Charlie Louvin’s Steps to Heaven is an excellent release. The production is warm and clean, the musicianship is spot-on, and Louvin’s voice evokes a world of emotions and textures. Though it’s an album rooted in a very specific faith and set of beliefs, it doesn’t attempt to force such beliefs on the listener. It’s a worthy entry in Louvin’s varied and lengthy career.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Music Review: Elvis Costello and the Imposters - Momofuku
After riding a roller coaster for the first time, you’re pumped full of adrenaline and eager to ride it again. After riding it for the second time, you’re a little woozy but still want to give it another go; after all, those carnival tickets weren’t cheap. After riding it for the third time, you still enjoy it but it wasn’t as exciting and unpredictable as you first thought. After riding it for the fourth time, when the carnival’s about to close, the tickets are about all blown, and the stuffed animal you won at tremendous cost is giving your skin a rash, you’re dizzy and disoriented, and that sick feeling in your stomach lets you know that you’re definitely going to upchuck something pretty soon.
Yet despite all this, you’ve enjoyed the ride and know you’ll probably want to tackle that coaster again once the carnival has left town.
That’s pretty much how I feel about Momofuku, the latest offering from Elvis Costello and the Imposters. It’s ultimately a solid album, even if subsequent listens reveal some of the bigger flaws within it.
Without sounding like a Luddite, the album’s best songs are those that feature the traditional patented Costello mix of guitar, drums, and keyboards. One of the album’s highlights is “American Gangster Time,” which prominently features keyboard wizard Steve Nieve on organ. It’s reminiscent of Costello’s earlier work without sounding derivative. Other nice moments include “No Hiding Place,” “Turpentine,” and “Stella Hurt,” complete with enough insults, veiled threats, and wordplay to satisfy those fans who prefer their Costello with a pinch of anger.
The album also contains one of Costello’s most autobiographical songs this side of North. “My Three Sons” is about, well, the singer’s three sons, and is not, despite what anyone might think, the theme song to an upcoming sitcom on CBS that will air immediately after Two and a Half Men. Sure it’s sentimental, perhaps overly so; but it somehow works as part of this album.
Some of the other songs aren’t as engaging. The most distracting aspect I hear in the album is the sometimes too-heavy reliance on background singers (both Costello’s voice and other singers). The most egregious offender is “Harry Worth,” which after a few listens sounds like a cross between Bob Dylan’s Shot of Love and a Bob Marley outtake.
“Pardon Me Madam, My Name Is Eve,” which Costello performed as a stripped-down guitar-only song on his recent solo tour opening for Dylan, seems a little cluttered on the album. Maybe it’s the benefit of having heard the solo outings on Costello’s tour, but the album version just sounds a little too jammed up with background singing.
To paraphrase Moe Green from The Godfather, Elvis Costello was making his bones while the rest of us were chasing after cheerleaders. Whether rightly or wrongly, Costello’s latest albums will always be judged against his late 1970s masterpieces. Maybe that’s inevitable for a musician who’s been releasing albums for that long. While Momofuku isn’t the best album Costello’s ever released (that honor clearly goes to Goodbye Cruel World…wait…), it’s a solid album with some great songs.
Yet despite all this, you’ve enjoyed the ride and know you’ll probably want to tackle that coaster again once the carnival has left town.
That’s pretty much how I feel about Momofuku, the latest offering from Elvis Costello and the Imposters. It’s ultimately a solid album, even if subsequent listens reveal some of the bigger flaws within it.
Without sounding like a Luddite, the album’s best songs are those that feature the traditional patented Costello mix of guitar, drums, and keyboards. One of the album’s highlights is “American Gangster Time,” which prominently features keyboard wizard Steve Nieve on organ. It’s reminiscent of Costello’s earlier work without sounding derivative. Other nice moments include “No Hiding Place,” “Turpentine,” and “Stella Hurt,” complete with enough insults, veiled threats, and wordplay to satisfy those fans who prefer their Costello with a pinch of anger.
The album also contains one of Costello’s most autobiographical songs this side of North. “My Three Sons” is about, well, the singer’s three sons, and is not, despite what anyone might think, the theme song to an upcoming sitcom on CBS that will air immediately after Two and a Half Men. Sure it’s sentimental, perhaps overly so; but it somehow works as part of this album.
Some of the other songs aren’t as engaging. The most distracting aspect I hear in the album is the sometimes too-heavy reliance on background singers (both Costello’s voice and other singers). The most egregious offender is “Harry Worth,” which after a few listens sounds like a cross between Bob Dylan’s Shot of Love and a Bob Marley outtake.
“Pardon Me Madam, My Name Is Eve,” which Costello performed as a stripped-down guitar-only song on his recent solo tour opening for Dylan, seems a little cluttered on the album. Maybe it’s the benefit of having heard the solo outings on Costello’s tour, but the album version just sounds a little too jammed up with background singing.
To paraphrase Moe Green from The Godfather, Elvis Costello was making his bones while the rest of us were chasing after cheerleaders. Whether rightly or wrongly, Costello’s latest albums will always be judged against his late 1970s masterpieces. Maybe that’s inevitable for a musician who’s been releasing albums for that long. While Momofuku isn’t the best album Costello’s ever released (that honor clearly goes to Goodbye Cruel World…wait…), it’s a solid album with some great songs.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Book Review: The Big Wheel by Bruce Thomas
“Why the [expletive deleted] do you want to re-read that [expletive deleted] book?” To be honest, it was a fair question. My brother’s basement library has enough books to rival a major league library. Choosing Bruce Thomas’ The Big Wheel was the equivalent of walking into a fine dining restaurant and asking for Hamburger Helper and I’ll take a Banana Pudding Pop for dessert, thank you.
I had decided to re-read several books related to life on the road in the world of music, including Sam Shepard’s Rolling Thunder Logbook, Larry Sloman’s On The Road With Bob Dylan, and, most precariously, Thomas’ The Big Wheel. Thomas, former bassist with Elvis Costello and the Attractions, is still an outcast in Planet Costello, and this book is allegedly a large part of the reason for this.
I first read this book when its second edition (a surefire and utterly distressing sign that there is indeed no justice in the publishing world) was published in 2003. To say I disliked it is being too mild; upon first reading, I couldn’t recall a less interesting, more pompous, and completely inane piece of writing (other than one of my own blogs). The insights into the touring life were the worst kind of pseudo-philosophical nonsense that a college kid might write after studying Sylvia Plath for a semester. Thomas was prone to massive fits of existential ponderings; the simple act of watching a lousy television show from his hotel room could plunge him (and the reader) into page after page of post-modern angst. He also came across as a snarky, sarcastic, bitter ex-musician (from a bassist, no less). Perhaps worst of all, he completely botched a reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
A second reading hasn’t really changed these opinions. However, there is actually a decent amount of comedy in this book, if the reader can look past its many flaws and accept it as, at best, a grossly exaggerated account of life in the Attractions. For example, Thomas tells a humorous story about how he assists a friend in transporting “wellies” all over the English countryside. Of course, nothing goes according to plan; the van filled with wellies (which I’m told by a British friend are either shoes, jimmy hats, or Filipino hookers) breaks down, Thomas “borrows” a tire from a nearby car, cops intervene, and the harebrained scheme takes several days and results in no profit.
The book also contains some funny stories about life in the Attractions, though, perhaps for fear of a lawsuit, Thomas never mentions the band members by name. Instead, they are reduced to names like The Singer, The Keyboard Player, and the Drummer. Although some of the tales are pure VH1 Behind the Music (musicians getting drunk and doing idiotic things in hotel rooms... imagine that), some of the dynamics of the Attractions’ interactions are revealed, if from a sometimes suspect point of view.
The other aspect that’s striking after a second read is how mild and non-offensive the characterization of Costello (er, The Singer) truly is. In fact, there are actually very few mentions of The Singer. These brief mentions portray The Singer as a hypochondriac, distant and removed from the rest of the band, and someone whom dogs always bark at. I suppose that Costello is actually a Terminator. That this book managed to get Costello, a man who’s lobbed plenty of grenades and putdowns in plenty of his songs, riled up, is somewhat surprising. The insults are few and far between, and are quite tame.
Even with these occasional touches of humor, The Big Wheel is a pretty brutal read, and seems far longer than it actually is. It certainly won’t go down as one of the best books about life in music. Thomas’ absurd philosophical musings and snarky disposition almost ensure that by themselves. But buried among these problems are some entertaining stories that might make the reader laugh. Just don’t expect an objective, fact-based account of life on the road with Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
I had decided to re-read several books related to life on the road in the world of music, including Sam Shepard’s Rolling Thunder Logbook, Larry Sloman’s On The Road With Bob Dylan, and, most precariously, Thomas’ The Big Wheel. Thomas, former bassist with Elvis Costello and the Attractions, is still an outcast in Planet Costello, and this book is allegedly a large part of the reason for this.
I first read this book when its second edition (a surefire and utterly distressing sign that there is indeed no justice in the publishing world) was published in 2003. To say I disliked it is being too mild; upon first reading, I couldn’t recall a less interesting, more pompous, and completely inane piece of writing (other than one of my own blogs). The insights into the touring life were the worst kind of pseudo-philosophical nonsense that a college kid might write after studying Sylvia Plath for a semester. Thomas was prone to massive fits of existential ponderings; the simple act of watching a lousy television show from his hotel room could plunge him (and the reader) into page after page of post-modern angst. He also came across as a snarky, sarcastic, bitter ex-musician (from a bassist, no less). Perhaps worst of all, he completely botched a reference to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
A second reading hasn’t really changed these opinions. However, there is actually a decent amount of comedy in this book, if the reader can look past its many flaws and accept it as, at best, a grossly exaggerated account of life in the Attractions. For example, Thomas tells a humorous story about how he assists a friend in transporting “wellies” all over the English countryside. Of course, nothing goes according to plan; the van filled with wellies (which I’m told by a British friend are either shoes, jimmy hats, or Filipino hookers) breaks down, Thomas “borrows” a tire from a nearby car, cops intervene, and the harebrained scheme takes several days and results in no profit.
The book also contains some funny stories about life in the Attractions, though, perhaps for fear of a lawsuit, Thomas never mentions the band members by name. Instead, they are reduced to names like The Singer, The Keyboard Player, and the Drummer. Although some of the tales are pure VH1 Behind the Music (musicians getting drunk and doing idiotic things in hotel rooms... imagine that), some of the dynamics of the Attractions’ interactions are revealed, if from a sometimes suspect point of view.
The other aspect that’s striking after a second read is how mild and non-offensive the characterization of Costello (er, The Singer) truly is. In fact, there are actually very few mentions of The Singer. These brief mentions portray The Singer as a hypochondriac, distant and removed from the rest of the band, and someone whom dogs always bark at. I suppose that Costello is actually a Terminator. That this book managed to get Costello, a man who’s lobbed plenty of grenades and putdowns in plenty of his songs, riled up, is somewhat surprising. The insults are few and far between, and are quite tame.
Even with these occasional touches of humor, The Big Wheel is a pretty brutal read, and seems far longer than it actually is. It certainly won’t go down as one of the best books about life in music. Thomas’ absurd philosophical musings and snarky disposition almost ensure that by themselves. But buried among these problems are some entertaining stories that might make the reader laugh. Just don’t expect an objective, fact-based account of life on the road with Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Music Review: Elvis Costello - This Year's Model Deluxe Edition
When I first read that Hip-O was going to reissue Elvis Costello’s debut album My Aim Is True, I was incredibly skeptical. The album had already been reissued approximately 219,000 times; another edition stank of pure, unhinged, uncontrollable record company (or musician) greed.
But when the Hip-O version turned out to actually be quite good – a few tunes that had never been released before, plus an early live concert, were included – I was pleasantly surprised. Even if this reissue wasn’t exactly the definitive version of the album (it didn’t by any means top the Rhino version), it had a reason to exist and wasn’t a fleecing of Costello’s fans.
Hip-O’s reissue campaign continues with its release of This Year’s Model. Costello’s second album and the first one featuring The Attractions, the album is rightly recognized as a stone classic, full of the anger, spite, and revenge that Costello personified in the late 1970s. Of course, this album has been reissued previously. The 2002 Rhino reissue was a welcome new take on the album. Jammed full of demos and other goodies, and featuring Costello’s humorous and honest liner notes, that edition appeared to be the final word on the album.
Hip-O’s release of the album won’t do much to change that opinion for most Costello fans. Whereas the MAIT edition had a few twists to make it a worthy purchase, there isn’t much in Hip-O’s edition to justify it as a purchase for Costello fans who already have the Rhino version.
Too much of this release is simply a rehash of the previous reissue. The vast majority of the bonus tracks on the first disc have already been released commercially, with most of them appearing on the superior Rhino editions of This Year’s Model or Armed Forces. This leaves the kick-ass 1978 Washington, D.C. show on the second disc as the only new offering for Costello fans. Although the show itself is fantastic and the sound is great – it’s also noticeable how manic and wild the band’s playing had become since the show featured on the MAIT reissue – it’s hard to justify another pricey purchase of the album for essentially nothing more than the live concert. Costello fans who already have the Rhino version won’t have much interest in this reissue, apart from the second disc.
The packaging itself follows the same formula as the Hip-O edition of MAIT, with printed lyrics and tons of photos that have either appeared in previous reissues or are minor variations of those photos. The packaging is sharp, to be sure; but at a time when creative packaging is one of the things that might influence someone to buy an actual hard-copy album instead of just grabbing it on iTunes, Hip-O’s final product is a little bland and uninspired. Just like the MAIT Hip-O version, Costello’s excellent liner notes that appeared on the Rhino edition are again excluded.
A two-disc set of live Elvis and the Attractions from 1978 might have been a better release and would certainly have satisfied Elvis’ army. With both the Rhino version still in print and a large number of great 1978 shows that circulate unofficially, another rehash of This Year’s Model without much of anything new comes across as pointless, or more cynically, as a typical record label money grab. One can only assume that Armed Forces is next on the reissue list; here’s hoping that reissue is an improvement over this one.
But when the Hip-O version turned out to actually be quite good – a few tunes that had never been released before, plus an early live concert, were included – I was pleasantly surprised. Even if this reissue wasn’t exactly the definitive version of the album (it didn’t by any means top the Rhino version), it had a reason to exist and wasn’t a fleecing of Costello’s fans.
Hip-O’s reissue campaign continues with its release of This Year’s Model. Costello’s second album and the first one featuring The Attractions, the album is rightly recognized as a stone classic, full of the anger, spite, and revenge that Costello personified in the late 1970s. Of course, this album has been reissued previously. The 2002 Rhino reissue was a welcome new take on the album. Jammed full of demos and other goodies, and featuring Costello’s humorous and honest liner notes, that edition appeared to be the final word on the album.
Hip-O’s release of the album won’t do much to change that opinion for most Costello fans. Whereas the MAIT edition had a few twists to make it a worthy purchase, there isn’t much in Hip-O’s edition to justify it as a purchase for Costello fans who already have the Rhino version.
Too much of this release is simply a rehash of the previous reissue. The vast majority of the bonus tracks on the first disc have already been released commercially, with most of them appearing on the superior Rhino editions of This Year’s Model or Armed Forces. This leaves the kick-ass 1978 Washington, D.C. show on the second disc as the only new offering for Costello fans. Although the show itself is fantastic and the sound is great – it’s also noticeable how manic and wild the band’s playing had become since the show featured on the MAIT reissue – it’s hard to justify another pricey purchase of the album for essentially nothing more than the live concert. Costello fans who already have the Rhino version won’t have much interest in this reissue, apart from the second disc.
The packaging itself follows the same formula as the Hip-O edition of MAIT, with printed lyrics and tons of photos that have either appeared in previous reissues or are minor variations of those photos. The packaging is sharp, to be sure; but at a time when creative packaging is one of the things that might influence someone to buy an actual hard-copy album instead of just grabbing it on iTunes, Hip-O’s final product is a little bland and uninspired. Just like the MAIT Hip-O version, Costello’s excellent liner notes that appeared on the Rhino edition are again excluded.
A two-disc set of live Elvis and the Attractions from 1978 might have been a better release and would certainly have satisfied Elvis’ army. With both the Rhino version still in print and a large number of great 1978 shows that circulate unofficially, another rehash of This Year’s Model without much of anything new comes across as pointless, or more cynically, as a typical record label money grab. One can only assume that Armed Forces is next on the reissue list; here’s hoping that reissue is an improvement over this one.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
An Indie Music Junkie's Year-End Best Of List
What would December be without crass commercialism, rampant orgy-like spending, and random year-end lists?
It Was the Best of Concerts, It Was the Worst of Concerts
Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, October 22, 2007 - In October the two music icons appeared at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Costello, armed with an array of guitars, delivered a memorable solo performance full of the spite, anger, humor, and occasional tenderness that mark his best songs. There was crowd participation, furious guitar playing, and a perfect “The Scarlet Tide” to close the set. Then Dylan ambled out, played a couple songs on guitar, and retreated behind his keyboard for a set that sounded like the end days. The mix was horrible, and Dylan could barely wheeze three words at a time as he growled his way through the murk.
Reunion Album That Reconfirmed It All
Beyond - Dinosaur Jr. - Sure, J Mascis looks like the guy you always see in Best Buy monopolizing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock while children wait impatiently for their crack at it, but Beyond was a tremendous reunion album. With its mix of guitar squall and buried melodies, it stands right alongside You’re Living All Over Me as a classic Dinosaur Jr. album.
Reunion Album That Ruined It All
The Weirdness - The Stooges - Forget that “Lust for Life” is now the theme song for a cruise ship commercial (with the lines about liquor and drugs carefully removed). This underwhelming album by the Stooges killed whatever mystique they had left. Even Steve Albini as “recorder” couldn’t save it.
Best Artist to Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial
It was an interesting year for Band of Horses. After a spat with fans in San Diego over videotaping of the band’s July 6 performance, the Sub Poppers took some heat for licensing songs to Wal-Mart for use in an online campaign. In recent weeks, the band’s song “Funeral” has been in heavy rotation for a Ford television commercial, marking the strangest use of a song for commercial purposes since Volkswagen used Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” in 2000.
Best Artist to Not Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial
That Tom Waits is a bad mofo. In January, Waits won a decision against Adam Opel AG, an offshoot of General Motors, for using a Waits soundalike to sell cars…in Scandinavia. It was the second time in less than two years that Waits won such a lawsuit. Rumors that BMW wants to use Waits’ “Misery is the River of the World” for their 2008 marketing campaign are not yet confirmed.
Favorite Concert
When The National played the Duck Room in St. Louis on June 11, Boxer was freshly released and beginning to garner plaudits that ranged from reserved praise to over-the-top awe. What could have been a sparsely attended show was instead a packed house with an eager, energetic crowd. Relying on the new material but also playing songs from Alligator and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the band delivered an intense, cathartic performance, surpassing the increasing hype. Now, if someone has a recording of it, I’m not hard to reach.
Reissues Are More Than Just Cash Grabs
Bronze – Calenture, The Triffids - The underappreciated 1980s Australian band finally got their due with a nice reissue of their 1987 album Calenture, the follow up to the essential Born Sandy Devotional. The original album, demos, and outtakes were spread out over two discs, plus the album’s packaging was snazzy and liner notes were actually informative.
Silver – Stand in the Fire, Warren Zevon - Long out of print on disc, Warren Zevon’s Stand in the Fire received the digital treatment this year. A recording of a wild, frenzied 1981 performance, the album showed Zevon at his manic best. Four cuts excluded from the original album were included to top it off. Play it loud.
Gold – Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth’s much-worshiped Daydream Nation was given a fat dose of bonus tracks this year. The original album is, of course, great, but the real treat here was the second disc, which was jammed full of Sonic Youth goodness, including a live version of each album track, as well as covers of songs by The Beatles, Neil Young, and Captain Beefheart. A nice essay and cool period photos made this reissue an essential purchase.
You Fool, Reissues Just Rob You of Money
Pointless reissues or compilations were certainly not in short supply in 2007. While many major labels could be taken to task for uninspired reissues/compilations, Columbia’s bland, boring, and utterly useless Dylan release represented everything wrong with such releases. With zero unreleased recordings (unless you paid on iTunes), this abomination rehashed most of the same damn songs as Dylan’s many other compilations. With an artist whose vault must be packed with unreleased goodies, lazy stuff like this shouldn’t even exist.
Favorite Albums
Bronze – Neon Bible, Arcade Fire - Even if many music fans and critics blew their loads over 2004’s Funeral, the Arcade Fire’s self-produced sophomore album gave everyone a chance to get fired up again. Even though the images of apocalypse and bombs could grow a little heavy-handed at times, Win Butler’s voice, ranging from howls to everything in between, and the band’s damn loud playing made this album more than just another rant about the sorry state of our world.
Silver – Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird - With the guitar pushed to the forefront, Armchair Apocrypha marked a stylistic shift for Andrew Bird. The songs were highly textured and far more layered than his previous albums; violin loops, drums, whistling, guitars and glockenspiels were thrown together to create a symphonic sound that amazingly didn’t result in garbled mush. The songs could sometimes be decidedly heavy; absurd superstitions, old age, the futility of war and the fall of empires, childhood confusion, and a general helplessness against a vast, impersonal world all unfolded in Bird’s lyrics. There aren’t many albums that sound like this one, and that’s a good thing.
Gold – Boxer, The National - Never has an album whose characters suffer under a veil of fuck-it-all resignation sounded so good. The songs on Boxer invoked themes of broken relationships, people aging quickly beyond their years, and passing, superficial comforts like drugs and booze; even the implied threats of “Start a War” sounded powerless and empty. Evocative lyrics, Matt Berninger’s weary baritone, and the band’s sometimes minimalist, sometimes layered instrumentation combined beautifully to create one of the best albums of the decade.
It Was the Best of Concerts, It Was the Worst of Concerts
Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan, October 22, 2007 - In October the two music icons appeared at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis. Costello, armed with an array of guitars, delivered a memorable solo performance full of the spite, anger, humor, and occasional tenderness that mark his best songs. There was crowd participation, furious guitar playing, and a perfect “The Scarlet Tide” to close the set. Then Dylan ambled out, played a couple songs on guitar, and retreated behind his keyboard for a set that sounded like the end days. The mix was horrible, and Dylan could barely wheeze three words at a time as he growled his way through the murk.
Reunion Album That Reconfirmed It All
Beyond - Dinosaur Jr. - Sure, J Mascis looks like the guy you always see in Best Buy monopolizing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock while children wait impatiently for their crack at it, but Beyond was a tremendous reunion album. With its mix of guitar squall and buried melodies, it stands right alongside You’re Living All Over Me as a classic Dinosaur Jr. album.
Reunion Album That Ruined It All
The Weirdness - The Stooges - Forget that “Lust for Life” is now the theme song for a cruise ship commercial (with the lines about liquor and drugs carefully removed). This underwhelming album by the Stooges killed whatever mystique they had left. Even Steve Albini as “recorder” couldn’t save it.
Best Artist to Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial
It was an interesting year for Band of Horses. After a spat with fans in San Diego over videotaping of the band’s July 6 performance, the Sub Poppers took some heat for licensing songs to Wal-Mart for use in an online campaign. In recent weeks, the band’s song “Funeral” has been in heavy rotation for a Ford television commercial, marking the strangest use of a song for commercial purposes since Volkswagen used Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” in 2000.
Best Artist to Not Have a Song Featured in a Car Commercial
That Tom Waits is a bad mofo. In January, Waits won a decision against Adam Opel AG, an offshoot of General Motors, for using a Waits soundalike to sell cars…in Scandinavia. It was the second time in less than two years that Waits won such a lawsuit. Rumors that BMW wants to use Waits’ “Misery is the River of the World” for their 2008 marketing campaign are not yet confirmed.
Favorite Concert
When The National played the Duck Room in St. Louis on June 11, Boxer was freshly released and beginning to garner plaudits that ranged from reserved praise to over-the-top awe. What could have been a sparsely attended show was instead a packed house with an eager, energetic crowd. Relying on the new material but also playing songs from Alligator and Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers, the band delivered an intense, cathartic performance, surpassing the increasing hype. Now, if someone has a recording of it, I’m not hard to reach.
Reissues Are More Than Just Cash Grabs
Bronze – Calenture, The Triffids - The underappreciated 1980s Australian band finally got their due with a nice reissue of their 1987 album Calenture, the follow up to the essential Born Sandy Devotional. The original album, demos, and outtakes were spread out over two discs, plus the album’s packaging was snazzy and liner notes were actually informative.
Silver – Stand in the Fire, Warren Zevon - Long out of print on disc, Warren Zevon’s Stand in the Fire received the digital treatment this year. A recording of a wild, frenzied 1981 performance, the album showed Zevon at his manic best. Four cuts excluded from the original album were included to top it off. Play it loud.
Gold – Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth’s much-worshiped Daydream Nation was given a fat dose of bonus tracks this year. The original album is, of course, great, but the real treat here was the second disc, which was jammed full of Sonic Youth goodness, including a live version of each album track, as well as covers of songs by The Beatles, Neil Young, and Captain Beefheart. A nice essay and cool period photos made this reissue an essential purchase.
You Fool, Reissues Just Rob You of Money
Pointless reissues or compilations were certainly not in short supply in 2007. While many major labels could be taken to task for uninspired reissues/compilations, Columbia’s bland, boring, and utterly useless Dylan release represented everything wrong with such releases. With zero unreleased recordings (unless you paid on iTunes), this abomination rehashed most of the same damn songs as Dylan’s many other compilations. With an artist whose vault must be packed with unreleased goodies, lazy stuff like this shouldn’t even exist.
Favorite Albums
Bronze – Neon Bible, Arcade Fire - Even if many music fans and critics blew their loads over 2004’s Funeral, the Arcade Fire’s self-produced sophomore album gave everyone a chance to get fired up again. Even though the images of apocalypse and bombs could grow a little heavy-handed at times, Win Butler’s voice, ranging from howls to everything in between, and the band’s damn loud playing made this album more than just another rant about the sorry state of our world.
Silver – Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird - With the guitar pushed to the forefront, Armchair Apocrypha marked a stylistic shift for Andrew Bird. The songs were highly textured and far more layered than his previous albums; violin loops, drums, whistling, guitars and glockenspiels were thrown together to create a symphonic sound that amazingly didn’t result in garbled mush. The songs could sometimes be decidedly heavy; absurd superstitions, old age, the futility of war and the fall of empires, childhood confusion, and a general helplessness against a vast, impersonal world all unfolded in Bird’s lyrics. There aren’t many albums that sound like this one, and that’s a good thing.
Gold – Boxer, The National - Never has an album whose characters suffer under a veil of fuck-it-all resignation sounded so good. The songs on Boxer invoked themes of broken relationships, people aging quickly beyond their years, and passing, superficial comforts like drugs and booze; even the implied threats of “Start a War” sounded powerless and empty. Evocative lyrics, Matt Berninger’s weary baritone, and the band’s sometimes minimalist, sometimes layered instrumentation combined beautifully to create one of the best albums of the decade.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Music Review: Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True (Deluxe Edition)
By my count, this is approximately the 54th time My Aim Is True has been reissued. Rykodisc reissued the CD a number of years ago, followed by Rhino’s 2001 two-disc reissue, which seemed to close the book on Elvis Costello’s debut album. The 2001 reissue, besides being loaded with vintage-era photos, posters, and promos, included liner notes penned by Costello himself, which were both funny and informative. They were also the closest thing to a Costello autobiography fans might ever get. Plus, they placed the album in the context of Costello’s life at that time. In short, it had all the makings of the final word for this album.
Then, in 2007, Hip-O reissued the album, in digipack format with “original packaging” but without any bonus material. So when I later read that Hip-O was planning to issue a “deluxe version” of the album, I approached the news with quite a bit of skepticism. At a time when album sales are steadily declining but sub-standard reissues flood the market, it’s a fair question to ask whether another release of this album is necessary. After all, between the Rykodisc and Rhino versions, coupled with the My Aim Is True outtakes and live material that have floated around on bootlegs for years, what rock has not yet been turned over?
To my surprise, the Hip-O reissue in most cases surpasses the Rhino reissue, and makes it (hopefully) the last necessary reissue of this album. With two discs and around two hours of material including outtakes (the Pathway studio demos and an early Attractions performance from August 1977), Elvis’ army will find plenty to like. That will likely reward them for shelling out more baksheesh for another reissue.
New Costello fans who have not yet purchased the album should consider themselves lucky; they can buy only this version and find Costello’s liner notes from the Rhino version online. Then they should hope and pray another reissue with better material doesn’t hit in the next couple years.
To be sure, the reissue is not perfect. Its biggest drawback is the complete lack of liner notes that offer a fresh, or any, interpretation or appreciation of the album. I am not advocating the sycophantic-praise approach that plagues so many reissues, but either a new introduction by Costello or others associated with the making of the album (or bloody hell, a reprint of Costello’s notes from the Rhino reissue) should have been included.
The other shortcoming is the actual packaging, which becomes increasingly important as a selling point as music labels try to compete (or cooperate) with iTunes and other similar outlets. Most of the booklet included with this reissue consists of the lyrics to the album and reproductions of 1977-era posters, buttons, and other promotional materials that for the most part already appear in the Rhino reissue. However, the fold-out photo of the band onstage, along with the two photos of Costello in concert on the actual digipack, are very cool.
Nevertheless, this reissue is an essential purchase for a few reasons. The wealth of bonus material crushes the Rhino version like a grape. Whereas the Rhino version’s bonus disc contained less than 40 minutes of material, most of which was pretty dull and also widely available on bootlegs like Our Aim Is True or Flip City Demos, both discs on the Hip-O version are packed full of goodies. Two of the outtakes on Disc One were included on the Rhino version, but the other two demos were not. In addition, the Pathway Studio demos are now available on CD for the first time (with the exception of “Welcome To The Working Week”). The demos far surpass the Rhino material in showing how the songs took shape and evolved; the demo version of “Miracle Man” in particular rivals the version that would eventually find its way to the album.
Even better is the second disc, which consists of a 17-song live performance in London from August 7, 1977, as well as the earlier sound check from that show. Despite having begun playing live as a band a little more than two months before this show, the Attractions are remarkably tight and the show itself is blistering. Though not as manic, frenzied, aggressive, or confrontational as the wild live shows from 1978 that can be heard via unofficial channels, it’s the perfect document of Costello and the Attractions in their earliest days. Shades of the musical hysteria and savagery that would follow as the band toured Europe and United States in 1978 can be heard in the live versions of “Lip Service” and “Night Rally.” The recording quality of the show is also perfect; even the most critical ears will be hard-pressed to find something to criticize about the performance.
Other artists and labels looking to reissue their classic albums should use this reissue as a blueprint for satisfying even the most hardcore fans. At no point does this reissue come across as a cheap cash grab (like, say, the baffling and truly unessential Springsteen We Shall Overcome reissue, and from a blue-collar man of the people, no less). The demo and outtake material go a long way in creating a definitive overview of Costello and the Attractions circa 1977, and the Nashville Rooms concert is as good as any other 1977 show that has been traded over the years. Similar treatments for Costello’s other great albums would be very welcome, especially for This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, and Get Happy!
However, I’m drawing the line at any further reissues of Punch The Clock or Goodbye Cruel World.
Then, in 2007, Hip-O reissued the album, in digipack format with “original packaging” but without any bonus material. So when I later read that Hip-O was planning to issue a “deluxe version” of the album, I approached the news with quite a bit of skepticism. At a time when album sales are steadily declining but sub-standard reissues flood the market, it’s a fair question to ask whether another release of this album is necessary. After all, between the Rykodisc and Rhino versions, coupled with the My Aim Is True outtakes and live material that have floated around on bootlegs for years, what rock has not yet been turned over?
To my surprise, the Hip-O reissue in most cases surpasses the Rhino reissue, and makes it (hopefully) the last necessary reissue of this album. With two discs and around two hours of material including outtakes (the Pathway studio demos and an early Attractions performance from August 1977), Elvis’ army will find plenty to like. That will likely reward them for shelling out more baksheesh for another reissue.
New Costello fans who have not yet purchased the album should consider themselves lucky; they can buy only this version and find Costello’s liner notes from the Rhino version online. Then they should hope and pray another reissue with better material doesn’t hit in the next couple years.
To be sure, the reissue is not perfect. Its biggest drawback is the complete lack of liner notes that offer a fresh, or any, interpretation or appreciation of the album. I am not advocating the sycophantic-praise approach that plagues so many reissues, but either a new introduction by Costello or others associated with the making of the album (or bloody hell, a reprint of Costello’s notes from the Rhino reissue) should have been included.
The other shortcoming is the actual packaging, which becomes increasingly important as a selling point as music labels try to compete (or cooperate) with iTunes and other similar outlets. Most of the booklet included with this reissue consists of the lyrics to the album and reproductions of 1977-era posters, buttons, and other promotional materials that for the most part already appear in the Rhino reissue. However, the fold-out photo of the band onstage, along with the two photos of Costello in concert on the actual digipack, are very cool.
Nevertheless, this reissue is an essential purchase for a few reasons. The wealth of bonus material crushes the Rhino version like a grape. Whereas the Rhino version’s bonus disc contained less than 40 minutes of material, most of which was pretty dull and also widely available on bootlegs like Our Aim Is True or Flip City Demos, both discs on the Hip-O version are packed full of goodies. Two of the outtakes on Disc One were included on the Rhino version, but the other two demos were not. In addition, the Pathway Studio demos are now available on CD for the first time (with the exception of “Welcome To The Working Week”). The demos far surpass the Rhino material in showing how the songs took shape and evolved; the demo version of “Miracle Man” in particular rivals the version that would eventually find its way to the album.
Even better is the second disc, which consists of a 17-song live performance in London from August 7, 1977, as well as the earlier sound check from that show. Despite having begun playing live as a band a little more than two months before this show, the Attractions are remarkably tight and the show itself is blistering. Though not as manic, frenzied, aggressive, or confrontational as the wild live shows from 1978 that can be heard via unofficial channels, it’s the perfect document of Costello and the Attractions in their earliest days. Shades of the musical hysteria and savagery that would follow as the band toured Europe and United States in 1978 can be heard in the live versions of “Lip Service” and “Night Rally.” The recording quality of the show is also perfect; even the most critical ears will be hard-pressed to find something to criticize about the performance.
Other artists and labels looking to reissue their classic albums should use this reissue as a blueprint for satisfying even the most hardcore fans. At no point does this reissue come across as a cheap cash grab (like, say, the baffling and truly unessential Springsteen We Shall Overcome reissue, and from a blue-collar man of the people, no less). The demo and outtake material go a long way in creating a definitive overview of Costello and the Attractions circa 1977, and the Nashville Rooms concert is as good as any other 1977 show that has been traded over the years. Similar treatments for Costello’s other great albums would be very welcome, especially for This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, and Get Happy!
However, I’m drawing the line at any further reissues of Punch The Clock or Goodbye Cruel World.
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