Next, a favourite of mine… indeed, I return to Elvis Costello’s first six or seven (or is it eight?) albums with alarming regularity. And I loved all those extra tracks that got added a few years back.
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ATTRACTIONS
Trust
(Columbia, 1980)
The inner sleeve features a very foolish attempt to impersonate Humphrey Bogart: words cannot do justice to this travesty of taste. “Clubland”, “Strict Time”. . . that’s two of our favorites. For the longest time we thought he was singing “Strychnine”, but we know he’s saying a lot of clever things even though we can only hear two or three words at a time, if only we could sit still and pay attention. Maybe he should work out a system where people are strapped into straitjackets and only allowed to listen in once everything is secure. Or perhaps he could provide a translator. Big card Idiot Boards around his neck. We know how American people have a problem with understanding the Queen’s English. We like the way he grew a beard way before he needed to — and played a bartender with typically self-deprecating lack of charm in the Spice Girls movie. And the way he called an album Almost Blue. We like blue. Blue is our favorite color, the same way E is our favorite key. This album, his fifth, came out when he was still on his first roll, playing with the Attractions, talking fast and not gone to fat. Thumbs up, no quibbling.
Cost 92 cents. Bargain value: album 7, slip cover 3
July 30, 2009 at 7:05 am |
I love that record. I also like the way he played a gun-wielding coffee-serving butler in Straight To Hell. I’m not sure about “Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…”, though. My love for Elvis compels me to watch it, but I’ve found it a bit boring.