Elvis Costello Fan Forum

I also think a good album is more than the sum of its parts, so there should be, say, 10% reserved for scoring 'how much more than the sum of its parts is this album'. A great album isn't a greatest hits, a series of brilliant moments, it's a total experience, a journey, an artefact, even if iTunes...

who's patton oswalt?

robert downey jr.
anthony lapaglia

sulky lad wrote: 23. Spike - overblown and overproduced - like a kiddie raiding a sweetshop and unable to resist trying everything available
I sill find it hard to single out anything that touches me from this album

veronica?

or both.

Well, I may be the Mayor of Simpleton, but melody is what I exactly miss in EC albums from 00's. Instead of writing/collecting an album's worth of great tunes (and this is what - for me at least - he did in case of All This Useless Beauty) he now prefers to write unhummable rootsy-bluesy-southerny ...

...not-so-unequivocally-good songs and performances... don't make an immortal album. there are too many sappy and whining songs in there...he was in the middle of a creative and personal crisis, and i think it is palpable, and not in a positive way. i think that is a bland and self-doubtful album. ...

My current ATUB listening phase (the last truly great EC album? discuss) Absolutely agree. There could be individual gems on every album Elvis has released since then, but as a whole All This Useless Beauty was, as you say, the last truly great EC album. i absolutely disagree. not-so-unequivocally-...

the WHAT?

he may have improved "technically" but i do prefer his previous voice, or, at least, his previous performances - until the juliet letters, and maybe brutal youth. now, often, it seems like he's acting, and simply pulling out tricks from his vocal repertoire.

"the last truly great EC album? discuss" "no".

well, of course i knew that my opinion about the later years of mccartney and dylan is not exactly "widely shared" (and of course i've listened to the last bootleg album, modern times, love and theft, time out of my mind and whatever). but i still can't see how the two can be compared: mcc...

personally, i surely wasn't around listening to ec stuff in 1978, but i find his latest efforts disappointing anyway... the first albums that i listened were mighty like a rose and spike. the quality of his early production, unmatched by his latest, hasn't got to do with the impressions left since y...

miat: nothing. tym: you belong to me, but there are other candidates. am: none. gh!!: beaten to the punch. t: fish'n'chips paper, but also shot with his own gun. and maybe others. ib: nothing really wrong, it seems to me. ptc: none. gcw: lots. comedians, i wanna be loved, joe porterhouse, deportee, ...

Agree with you completely about God's Comic as a live song. On the record, it's actually a great track, cool bass playing and horns. I saw him do it at a soundcheck at the start of the 1987 Confederates tour, solo, when it was previously unperformed, and it sent chills down my spine (partly because...

hey, the only vote for "for the stars" has disappeared!

watched it: well, he doesn't sing badly, in my opinion. certainly his interpretations have changed through the years: they lack the bity bit, the mordent, something controversial and cynical: the awareness that sentiments are a joke in a world characterized by mindless violence, after all. now he's ...

stranger in the house? better than anything on secret, profane and sugarcake.

thank you for the video. i'll let you know.

alexv wrote: You should, by the way, take a look a footage of George Jones, Tony Bennett and Smokey Robinson, just to name a few, literally cringing as you sing along with them to understand what I mean about your vocal limitations.

where can i see that...

everybody "hates" spike. it's far from my comprehension why. i like both chewing gum and pads, paws & claws.

i like most of the songs listed b ypsilanti, excluding seven o'clock and world's greatest optimist, which i don't remember, or maybe i've never listened to.

putting aside the most personal idiosyncrasies (or trying to), the badly written ones that spring to my mind are: playboy to a man, broken (it seems we all agree about these two), glitter gulch, maybe after the fall. sweet pear is overly sentimental, but nonetheless has great impact. luxembourg is n...

one of his songs that i really can't stand is battered old bird, right from the first chords.

i think i'll avoid it for the rest of my existence.

if i have to listen to a suite for a ballet, i think i'll choose the nutcracker or the lake of swans.

il sogno was even worse than mccartney's classical efforts, in my opinion.

yeah, some very good songs in there.

it's been voted by a von otter.

personally:

1. north
2. the delivery man
3. when i was cruel

let's go north.

KOA at 15!! :shock: never grabbed me. it's too sugarly mellow, and i find the fast country tracks rather clumsy or not convincing (the big light and the other one), while the two covers sounds a bit out of place. eisenhower blues is downright boring, should have been kept as b side for some single....