Elvis Costello: Classic or Dud

Is uhh this a good tour if one is really only familiar with EC up to 1992 or so?

Dud

setlists appear to be mostly stuff from his first few albums + covers

He doesn't have his backup singers this time, which may help. I've seen him twice with them - first time was on the tour revisiting Imperial Bedroom and it worked in that context due to the complex arrangements, but the second time (supporting Look Now) both highlighted what felt overdone about that album AND may have negatively impacted his performance. The second time was post-surgery so I don't know if he was in weaker shape, but he had to project louder over everything else and he was noticeably dragging behind everyone vocally - it almost seemed like he was struggling.

New single is sounding good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnQIWS5F4PU

Yeah, it almost sounds like something the B-52's would've recorded in the early '80s. I don't think he's made a consistently good album since When I Was Cruel and The Delivery Man (they would have been back-to-back albums if it weren't for his excursions into ballet and tepid jazz) so here's hoping.

Actually, looking over the 25 or so albums he's put out since 1989, there's maybe seven I actually like:

Spike (if you take the 11 demos from Rhino's bonus disc and slot in the demo-like "God's Comic")
Brutal Youth
All This Useless Beauty
Costello & Nieve
Painted from Memory
When I Was Cruel
The Delivery Man

And I would supplement these with a compilation of highlights from the rest. He's had enough ideas and songs to sustain a nice run of really good EP's out of the likes of National Ransom, Wise Up Ghost, Look Now, Hey Clockface, etc.

Would love to hear a s&d of the post '89 years, if someone has the stamina.

Like Prince, I think Elvis Costello's post-peak years (after 1986 in his case, after 1996 with Prince) would have looked pretty good and consistent had 60 to 70% of what he released been kept in the vaults.

The problem with "Brutal Youth" is that the songs and performances are good, but it sounds like the band recorded the album, and then Elvis was brought in to a different studio to scream over everything, and then asked for his vocals to be mixed even higher afterwards.

Hah, I just listened to this the other day (I basically did what I've done with Bowie and Prince and played a bunch of albums in order).

I think that problem has something to do with the era - that's when the whole "loudness" wars nonsense started, and a lot stuff from 1994 seems to be engineered the same way, with a lot more compression (though not as much as we have now), a hard, sharp EQ pattern that boosted the top and upper mids, and often times vocals that are bone dry and mixed up. It is what it is, and sometimes I do love it, but I'm not a fan of how it sounds here. It doesn't bother me too much because I just accept it and focus on other things.

It's a good album, but "20% Amnesia" is f-ing awful - dropping that track helps the flow immensely. The album's too long anyway - without it, it still runs over 50 minutes.

That was also a problem with Spike - I forgot it was well over an hour. I tried listening to the album as it was released, and surprisingly it seemed better this time around...BUT what also seemed to help was dropping the two instrumentals and a track like "Any King's Shilling" (and possibly "Miss MacBeth"). That gets it to 46 or 51 minutes, and the production seems less all over the place since you're losing some of the biggest detours (musically-speaking) on the album. It also feels like an extension of Blood & Chocolate where you have this eclectic album that doesn't have an overriding theme or concept, just 11 or 12 well-crafted songs. More ambitious in the production department, but more or less the same blueprint.

FWIW, I also thought Punch the Clock was better after applying some changes based on Costello's comments in the reissue liner notes. Replace "The Element Within Her" with "The Flirting Kind" and replace "Love Went Mad" with "Heathen Town" - it seems to pull the album more in the direction of Imperial Bedroom.

What's wrong with "Brutal Youth" is more than the loudness war. It's like the band (inc. EC's guitar) was mixed down, and the vocals were mixed way up, then further blasted totally in the red as an aesthetic choice. They sound like they were recorded as demos on an iphone and just dropped onto the album totally raw. Like he's yelling in your ear while the music plays from another room.

A compilation by KFOG in San Francisco containing a selection of performances from their archives, this seems to be the same performance used for Costello & Nieve. Better than the album version, but it also made me realize how much I overlooked the songs themselves on Brutal Youth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nG7E2MJO5Q

Actually, someone uploaded the whole EP set - adds up to a two-hour live album with only one repeated song (from different shows):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATE0WRAWdhw

The drums on BY sound like shit.

That's pretty much the drum sound on a lot of Mitchell Froom's productions...I'm fine with it, but it's an acquired taste. What does he actually do them anyway?

To me it just sounds like Pete Thomas used a clangy, 60s/Motown kind of snare throughout. I love the sound of that album, drums and all. I don't think it ever gets mentioned, but BY was his 'Back to Basics' album at the time

That's pretty much the drum sound on a lot of Mitchell Froom's productions...I'm fine with it, but it's an acquired taste. What does he actually do them anyway?

― birdistheword,

They bother me less on Richard Thompson and Suzanne Vega albums, though

I don’t enjoy Elvis’s guitar playing on most of his post-Brutal Youth records - it’s like he’s trying too hard to be Marc Ribot. And from the 2000s onwards, the Imposters are basically a guitar rock band and Nieve seems content to disappear unless it’s a duo record. I’ll take Froom’s 90s production over the dullness of the 2000s stuff though.

xpost Vega/Froom’s 99.9F is a masterpiece!

Pete typically used the classic Ludwig metal "biscuit tin" snare. Ironically, that trademark Froom clang is closer to what drums actually sound like than what we usually hear, but I think Froom/Blake play it up a bit to be even more distinctive. But for whatever reason, I think that approach just does not work with EC. *Everything* sounds so loud and abrasive and distracting, so much so it's sometimes hard to believe this is the same crack band that recorded all those classic Lowe-produced albums. I mean, Nick Lowe loves a clanging snare drum, too, at least sometimes, but his own trademark bash and pop production sounds downright restrained compared to "Brutal Youth." Which is also ironic, since iirc some of it was produced by Lowe, too!

the Crowded House albums produced by Froom also sound fine.

And Los Lobos, etc. It's only EC that sounds bad, and as the biggest ego of the bunch I wouldn't be surprised if it was all his fault.

I've actually got mixed feelings about the Thompson albums. A lot of those songs sounded MUCH better live, and not just for the extended solos.

Lowe did not produce any of BY's tracks. He only played bass and stepped aside late in the process when he suggested Bruce Thomas would be more suitable for the remaining songs they didn't nail down.

Los Lobos and Latin Playboys were great Froom productions. I liked SOME of the cuts he did with Bonnie Raitt. I'm not a Crowded House fan beyond one or two singles, but "Don't Dream Is Over" is still great.

I think Froom really saps the life out of Los Lobos (maybe that was what they were going for!), those records always sound dispiritingly mannered to me. Brutal Youth has lotsa energy even if sounds a little dated.

Lisa Germano's Slide is a Tchad Blake-credited production, but Froom is involved too and it's probably my favorite example of their sonic aesthetic

I sometimes forget that Brutal Youth has the Attractions on it; but All This Useless Beauty manages to sound much more like the Attractions than BY, while employing more expansive (and certainly more effective) arrangements.

And that album marked the return of Geoff Emerick, right?

Yep. I remember being struck by the production on first listen unaware it was Emerick.

love “shallow grave” on that record. It’s a throwaway but the chorus is tucking stomping.

Strange, I have to agree with EC's own take that All This Useless Beauty was more of a solo project. "Poor Fractured Atlas," the song he wrote for Roger McGuinn ("You'll Bow Down"), "I Want to Vanish," etc...I was actually surprised to see the Attractions were credited when I first paid close attention to the album. Anyway, it's a pretty good, low-key album.

You Bowed Down

Good song

My mistake, but yes, good song!

Anyone seem him on this tour? Worth seeing him for the first time?

Apparently good, as usual. I think Charlie Sexton is sitting in on guitar? Dylan just started touring again, so I guess that means Sexton is no longer in that particular crew.

Yeah, it's been confirmed Dylan had to replace Sexton.

Alright, I'll try to win tickets or check for last-minute deals next Saturday.

I played GET HAPPY !! this week for the first time in full, though I've known bits of the LP for decades.

It's marvellous.

One thing I like is how the relatively well known songs - 'new amsterdam', 'high fidelity', 'I can't stand up' - are in the middle of the 20 songs, so for a long time it's fronting up with relatively obscure numbers; some of which I barely knew.

It's a Motown / 60s beat pastiche, I suppose, very well enough done for my ears; but also at times an exercise in Ska, and one song maybe country-soul?

I greatly admire EC's craftsmanship in writing and arranging the songs, and the way that again and again and again he inserts a tremendous little couplet, phrase, pun, barbed sequence into the words - usually about 3 per song.

One other note, not a new thought, is the prevalence of cultural history in the lyrics - the sense of animating a history of eg: noir motifs, old movies. At times ('motel matches', 'black and white world') maybe this is explicitly reflected on? (Well, I'm assuming there that 'black and white world' refers to film, but actually I'm not sure it does.)

I've been back into EC a lot lately. Properly 'discovering' this LP after so long deepened this experience.

I like Froom's drum sound a lot, particularly on BY.

Hoover Factory on Get Happy, I could listen to that over and over again, it might be my favourite EC song.

Lol, I meant "Secondary Modern" but I love "Hoover Factory" too

I love his singing on "Secondary Modern," especially the way he sings the chorus. Get Happy!! in general is pretty awesome - I can't remember where, but I remember reading somewhere that the engineer Roger Bechirian said it was his favorite album by EC too. (He'd go on to co-produce Squeeze's best album with EC.)

I didn't know 'secondary modern' well at all but yes, outstanding sound, song and singing.

Get Happy was my favorite growing up; I listened to it on the way to school every morning. Later I thought that the "serious" ones were better (Imperial Bedroom, King of America, This Years Model maybe). But I pulled out my vinyl copy a couple of months ago and was completely blown away by how solid the whole thing is, and was especially impressed by his "backing vocals." It really holds up.

Also, as Nick Lowe insists, "no groovepacking!"

"Human Touch" and "I Stand Accused" are the only middling songs on here; he recorded better outtakes but probably felt he needed to keep the tempo up. There's an interview where he explains that the lyrics were almost like automatic writing; songs were written nearly as soon as they were written. There's a lot of amusing nonsense in the words that was actually more appealing than when he took more time and used more craft to come up with more perfect words.

According to someone on Song Meanings:

"Black and White World" refers to the black and white photography used in the cheaper porno mags of the 60's and 70's.

OTM. He really had a tendency to overwork things until they turned bad.

Yes, and that's one reason Get Happy is so good: he's working quickly.

Pete's drumming on Human Touch is all-time great.