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Malaysia Star, Malaysia
March 3 2008
The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years
Artist: Elvis Costello
Genre: Rock
(Hip-O/Universal)
Reviewer: CHUA CHERN TOONG
The Elvis Costello of today hardly bears any resemblance to the Elvis Costello of yesteryear. When Costello started way back in the mid-70s, he was a virtual, virulent firebrand, spewing bitter yet witty diatribes at such diverse subjects as conservative politics, rampant racism, unrequited love and working-class tedium.
Songs like I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea, Watching the Detectives and Accidents Will Happen were true standards of the day, passionate, prickly punk-pop creations that are cited time and again as some of the most literate and potent songs of the modern rock era.
As time went by, Costello began to incorporate a wider range of styles into his musical palette. Absorbing everything from twangy country, Brill Building pop and modern classical to bouncy reggae, lilting folk and fervent R&B, Costello also began collaborating with luminaries like Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, Roy Orbison and even opera diva Anne Sofie von Otter.
By 1998’s Painted from Memory, a joint venture with the venerable Bacharach, you could hardly recognise Costello as the punk upstart who denounced music-industry corporate vultures in the fiery Radio Radio.
To keep track of Costello’s ever changing artistic moods would be a truly intricate process, and this is where The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years comes in to save the day.
Spanning an extremely generous 22 tracks, this single-disc anthology covers the first half of Costello’s long and varied career from the furious, angry-young-man phase to the more mature but no less compromising middle stage.
This handy compilation should give the novice a good idea of the essential Costello standards, concentrating on the songs that turned him into a household name over the course of the late 70s and early 80s.
The initial period of the mid- to late 70s is widely mentioned as Costello’s most fertile cycle, containing strident numbers like the bold, confident What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding; the pure, buoyantly poppy Oliver’s Army (a pot shot at thoughtless Tory policies); the spare, mock-reggae melody Watching the Detectives (one of the most venomous tunes he has ever penned); and the deceptively pensive ballad Alison.
Other certified classics from this era include the clattering, energetic Pump It Up, the kaleidoscopic supper-club jingle Clubland, the heavy-going power ballad Man Out of Time and the shiny, Merseybeat-influenced Accidents Will Happen.
Costello slipped into the 80s with consummate ease, absorbing more stylistic changes but still keeping his unique artistry intact. Notable songs from this spell included here comprise the rueful, countryish Good Year for the Roses, the windswept anti-war epic Shipbuilding, the effervescent new-wave bauble Everyday I Write the Book, and the bitter, bile-filled ballad Almost Blue.
Also worth mentioning is the inventively layered, psychedelic Beyond Belief which sounds comparable to anything The Beatles put out in their Sergeant Pepper period.
As it stands, The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years, qualifies as one of the most wide-ranging Costello omnibuses out there, gathering the diverse chapters of the first half of his career and plonking them in one handy location for neophytes and devotees alike to enjoy.
While the sheer range of styles on display here might be too much to take in at one go, it is still gratifying to find so many Costello classics on display in one convenient set. Clearly intended to illustrate Costello’s stylistic scope, this should entice any greenhorn to pick up his original studio albums.