Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why ?

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when i was cruel
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Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why ?

Post by when i was cruel »

Iam just curious, it would have to be aside from So Like Candy which seems to be a big hit from it Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4. It is a beautiful ballad they shows E at the throne of song writing chilling tales and is quite frankly the best performed live song, he bares his soul every performance on that song especially when he sings it without a mic. He makes it a song where most crowds wouldn't join in and sing and allows them to interact with his music much in his own way.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by wardo68 »

Those are probably my favorites as well. Can't say much more than that.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by cwr »

I've often gone on and on about what a perfect ALBUM I think MLAR is. There are certain "major" songs which sort of define it-- they are like the structural beams that hold it all together-- The Other Side Of Summer, Hurry Down Doomsday, So Like Candy and Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4. I think most people would agree that those 4 songs sort of define the album, right? If you were gonna pick four songs for Elvis to play in concert to "represent" MLAR, I'd say it would be hard to argue with those four choices.

Then there is sort of a next level of songs which make up the bulk of the album-- they are all quite different from one another, but they don't feel as genre-hopping as the songs on, say, SPIKE. They all seem to live in the same universe, whereas SPIKE almost feels like it could be a sampler taken from 8 different albums. And in MLAR these songs veer from anger to cynicism to melancholy to sweetness.

Finally, there are the two songs most people "love to hate" for some reason-- Playboy To A Man and Broken. I will defend them both to my last breath. Neither is among my favorites, but I think they both fit perfectly on this album. I think Broken's place between Sweet Pear and CCIU#4 is a perfect musical bridge. (I know I am convincing no one, and do not intend to. Those who hate Broken are so devoted to their hatred of it that it is eternal, it will never die...)

All this is prelude to say that, at this moment in time, my favorite MLAR track is: "Just Another Mystery."

It has no place on the album, and yet it is very much OF the album, and I love it.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Poor Deportee »

'Just Another Mystery' is a real Bob Dylan moment, in that, to my ears, it's a clear case of possibly the BEST track from a recording session being left off an album (a feat Dylan repeatedly and bafflingly accomplished throughout his self-sabotaging 1980s). I will go to the grave bewildered that EC left it off the record. Thanks to Christopher for letting me hear the bonus CD and allowing me to rediscover this record, which, for all its flaws and total Rasputinesque madness, I enjoy.

Now as for the thread. 'Unexpected' and 'Candy' are indeed obvious candidates for best track. 'After the Fall' is another. I find 'The Other Side of Summer' to be a fascinating little song, although I confess to preferring the live version on the bonus disc. In either case, though, it's a deviously subversive pop confection.

Sometimes we find ourselves liking something that nobody else seems to like. For instance, I really enjoy the Polanski film The Ninth Gate, which everyone else on planet earth seems to think is irredeemable trash. :lol: Well, 'All Grown Up' is the analogous case for me on MLAR. Apart from the 'look at yourself!' bit, which may be a little too didactic, I find this to be one of the most interesting songs EC has ever penned. As I noted on the MLAR thread a while back, this song is the absolute antithesis of a 'rock and roll' tune, calling out in a really cold and brutal way the delusions and self-importance of the young. I can't think of another song, at least not in the pop/rock idiom, that so pitilessly dissects the pretenses of youthful rebellion. I think perhaps it makes people uncomfortable for this very reason. (The bizarre score doesn't help, although it does underline the contrariness of the song). It's a remarkable song for someone in EC's position to write, and although I'll never rate it his finest moment, it might be among his most audacious as a composer.

Indeed, that's what 'Other Side' and 'All Grown Up' have in common...a twisted sort of repudiation of pop/rock myths. The one flips the 'summer single' onto its back and proceeds to disembowel it; the other mercilessly eviscerates the arrogance of youth. I rather miss EC's days of feeling that he was still relevant enough to be directly addressing the entire culture of pop music, to say nothing of the culture as a whole. Just my two cents.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Hawksmoor »

'Broken' is awful, I'm afraid - one of the four or five Costello tracks I really find it a chore to listen to. My favourites are obvious ones: 'The Other Side of Summer' and 'How to be Dumb'. Classic, bile-strewn, punchy Costello rockers. I'm a sucker for all that stuff, even 30+ years down the line.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by cwr »

The weird thing for me is that "Just Another Mystery" is a perfect MLAR track, and yet I can't honestly say that it has a place in the sequencing of the album. (Unlike, say, "Almost Ideal Eyes", inexplicably left off of ATUB, which would fit in almost anywhere on that record.)

It feels like it should have been a non-album single, like "Strawberry Fields Forever"!
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by wardo68 »

cwr wrote:The weird thing for me is that "Just Another Mystery" is a perfect MLAR track, and yet I can't honestly say that it has a place in the sequencing of the album. (Unlike, say, "Almost Ideal Eyes", inexplicably left off of ATUB, which would fit in almost anywhere on that record.) It feels like it should have been a non-album single, like "Strawberry Fields Forever"!
Ditto.

And I still don't hate "Broken". Though I don't need the demo version.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by verbal gymnastics »

I love Couldn't call it unexpected no. 4 and Just another mystery.

The problem with asking what people's favourite track is is that almost everybody gives more than one track.

This is a difficult one but I'm going to plump for CCIU#4.

It's a little bit unfair because I've had the honour of seeing Elvis sung it unamplified a number of times and it still moves me. I don't think he's ever played JAM live but I'd love him to.
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Neil.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Neil. »

It's gotta be Couldn't Call It Unexpected, but I'd like to stand up for Georgie And Her Rival - I love the wistful pop sweep of it - and I do think Sweet Pear could become a classic ballad, just as long as it's not sung by Elvis, whose amazing voice doesn't suit this one - it turns ugly on far too many notes. But the song's great.

'Other Side of Summer' strikes me as a bit overdone, but I loved it when it first came out, and wish it'd been a summer hit. The chorus is one of those amazing, surprising Costello melodies that never quite loses its thrill.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Dr. Luther »

Neil. wrote:but I'd like to stand up for Georgie And Her Rival
Great pop song.
Should've been a hit.

CCIU #4 is probably my favorite Costello composition of all.
It's a remarkable piece of songwriting.
And while I love the unamplified live version, I've always been partial to the treatment on MLAR.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Kevin Davis »

Poor Deportee wrote:Sometimes we find ourselves liking something that nobody else seems to like. For instance, I really enjoy the Polanski film The Ninth Gate, which everyone else on planet earth seems to think is irredeemable trash. :lol: Well, 'All Grown Up' is the analogous case for me on MLAR. Apart from the 'look at yourself!' bit, which may be a little too didactic, I find this to be one of the most interesting songs EC has ever penned. As I noted on the MLAR thread a while back, this song is the absolute antithesis of a 'rock and roll' tune, calling out in a really cold and brutal way the delusions and self-importance of the young. I can't think of another song, at least not in the pop/rock idiom, that so pitilessly dissects the pretenses of youthful rebellion. I think perhaps it makes people uncomfortable for this very reason. (The bizarre score doesn't help, although it does underline the contrariness of the song). It's a remarkable song for someone in EC's position to write, and although I'll never rate it his finest moment, it might be among his most audacious as a composer.
I love "All Grown Up," too--apart from "Summer" and "Unexpected," it's my favorite track on 'Mighty.' I think there's a real bittersweetness to it; for as much it calls out the youthful delusions you describe , I think there are a lot of implications of regret and nostalgia, too--almost a struggle on the part of the singer to decide he'd prefer to be grown and enlightened or young and delusional. That it's one of Elvis's most thoughtfully arranged melodies (not an uncommon theme on 'Mighty') really draws that feeling out. It's one of those songs that I feel makes the eventual arrival at albums like 'Painted From Memory' and 'North' seem inevitable.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by wordnat »

Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4
All Grown Up
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by jardine »

couldn't call it. . .is my favourite on this cd, but yes, all grown up, and summer.

I don't know why, be cciu#4 seems to point forward to national ransom somehow. it has something of the darkness and mysteriousness of that work, tragedy, longing, resignation, like threads of jimmie and stations and church...youhungthemoon as well.

Couldn't call it always sound somehow edwardian or victorian, like a novel of tragic family events, glimpsing terrible faces in the fire, "I've got his name" pinning someone to their bloodline, and all that--which, I guess, is a bit why i link it to NR, because there is an era invoked, musically as well, this waltz...

oops, random thoughts again!!.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by docinwestchester »

jardine wrote:couldn't call it. . .is my favourite on this cd, but yes, all grown up, and summer.
Really nice performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBwrmMSGcbs
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by jardine »

thanks, yes, seen this before. fantastic. there is a certain intensity that e.c. can have, both as a composer and a singer. . .not loudness or such, but almost the opposite, intense quietness, tightness, pressure almost in the melody and words and the performance. this sure is one of those (i find many things on North to be the same way). you can just feel the grip of those family ties that have gone so wrong...this is something of the same reason i was hit by that performance of stations of the cross posted above.

it really does seem otherworldly, this song--even the waltz lilt and that lovely and terrible sad upward four note melody at the beginning of each verse, like someone's chamber room, 1912 or something. can anyone else sort out the "genre" of this song--i don't want to pin it down, exactly, but it feels so familiar as a type of song. Is it kurt weil-ish, too? and randy newman a bit. . .hmmm
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Neil. »

Jardine, it's also got a Tom Waits-y vibe to it (I can imagine Tom Waits singing it), and a circusy, fairgroundy vibe - with a dash of sea shanty thrown in! - and that old song Cockles and Mussels ("Alive, alive-oh, alive, alive-oh...")
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by sulky lad »

Neil wrote
I love the wistful pop sweep of it - and I do think Sweet Pear could become a classic ballad, just as long as it's not sung by Elvis, whose amazing voice doesn't suit this one - it turns ugly on far too many notes. But the song's great.
And it would be my favourite track if it wasn't for the obvious straining that Elvis does - it doesn't serve a beautiful melody at all.Therefore, in an entirely unoriginal move, I'd call CCIU No.4
I've got a strange review somewhere about this talking about Costello's lapsed Catholicism, I'll scan it and post it shortly ! but it seems to add more to the religious/agnostic approach of the whole song and seemed to be ties in with Cait having a miscarriage around this time - all adding to the extreme sadness of the track.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by jardine »

somehow these threads fit. tom waits would do a wonderful job singing this, a sort of ramshackle parade-drum waltz full of images, hidden implications, shadows, shivers though the room was like a furnace, and arrays of icons--"still fastened to the frame"-- and family tethers that bind ("i've got his name" and they've got, like some treasured trove of some saint, "his bones"--ossuary relics), so, very Catholic indeed, failed or otherwise. love to see that piece once it is scanned.

and again, i feel the same sort of deep entanglement in many of NR songs. Also back to songs like "New Lace Sleeves" for some reason, a similar tense restraint, and the weirdness of hands that have never seen working blisters, and e.c.s narrator wishing to be one of them...
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by And No Coffee Table »

sulky lad wrote:I've got a strange review somewhere about this talking about Costello's lapsed Catholicism, I'll scan it and post it shortly ! but it seems to add more to the religious/agnostic approach of the whole song and seemed to be ties in with Cait having a miscarriage around this time - all adding to the extreme sadness of the track.
If you're referring to the "Nearer My God To E" interview, it's a hoax.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by sulky lad »

Ah, thanks for that ANCT< do you have any details about it - the text certainly contained some of Elvis' more odd views.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by Ypsilanti »

jardine wrote:somehow these threads fit. tom waits would do a wonderful job singing this, a sort of ramshackle parade-drum waltz full of images, hidden implications, shadows, shivers though the room was like a furnace, and arrays of icons--"still fastened to the frame"-- and family tethers that bind ("i've got his name" and they've got, like some treasured trove of some saint, "his bones"--ossuary relics), so, very Catholic indeed, failed or otherwise. love to see that piece once it is scanned.
The melody definitely calls to mind something circus-y---that little drumroll at the start really sells it. So easy to picture ladies swinging on the trapeze above. What you say about Tom Waits is very apt, too, because somehow it's not just a circus, but clearly a sleazy one. The melody and arrangement brilliantly convey all the malevolence and sadness that small-time circuses seem to embody. And later, "And I'm the lucky Goon who composed this tune from birds arrange on the high wire", ...so lovely--who hasn't seen birds like that, sitting like notes on a staff? I like to think some of the melody actually was derived that way. And, of course, "high wire", reinforces the circus idea. I'd say his delivery of the song, while somewhat shouty and strained, is perfect for this circumstance--he's the ringmaster, naturally.
jardine wrote:and again, i feel the same sort of deep entanglement in many of NR songs. Also back to songs like "New Lace Sleeves" for some reason, a similar tense restraint, and the weirdness of hands that have never seen working blisters, and e.c.s narrator wishing to be one of them...
A small thing, but..."I know they've got their problems. How I wish I was one of them"...I think he's saying he wishes he were one of their problems, not one of them...
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by And No Coffee Table »

sulky lad wrote:Ah, thanks for that ANCT< do you have any details about it - the text certainly contained some of Elvis' more odd views.
When the subject came up on the listserv years ago, it was said to be some sort of prank intended to trick the Elvis Costello Information Service into printing a fake article.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by jardine »

"one of their problems"???? Yes, of course, that's EVEN BETTER!!!!
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by the_platypus »

Ypsilanti wrote:
jardine wrote:and again, i feel the same sort of deep entanglement in many of NR songs. Also back to songs like "New Lace Sleeves" for some reason, a similar tense restraint, and the weirdness of hands that have never seen working blisters, and e.c.s narrator wishing to be one of them...
A small thing, but..."I know they've got their problems. How I wish I was one of them"...I think he's saying he wishes he were one of their problems, not one of them...
I think it works on both levels, intentionally so.
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Re: Your favorite MLAR (including bonus disc) track and why

Post by docinwestchester »

the_platypus wrote:
I think it works on both levels, intentionally so.
As is the case with so many of his lyrics. The guy's basically a genius with words. Two favorites I was thinking about today:

"Don't put your heart out on your sleeve / When your remarks are off the cuff"
"So what if this is a man's world / I want to be a kid again about it"

They work on multiple levels, don't they?

In the interview he did for Live From The Artists Den (Nov 2, 2010) he said "I have as much in common with a welder as I do a writer". I call bullshit, Elvis.
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