Elvis Costello has released so many albums, and so many reissues of those albums featuring dozens of bonus tracks, that he’s bound to show up on Random Weekends more than most.
I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I recall Costello bonus disc cuts like today’s SOTD popping up more than a few times since I started this tradition.
The Random iTunes Fairy was definitely in an Elvis Costello mood today. The first spin of the dial turned up an alternate version of Imperial Bedroom‘s ‘Kid About It,’ which already had its moment in the Random Weekend spotlight in April of 2013.
My second try landed on ‘Tokyo Storm Warning,’ one of a few epic tracks on 1986’s Blood & Chocolate.
My seventh best album of 2002 is the 21st studio album by Elvis Costello. The famously prolific Costello has released nine more albums since, though his current three-year absence is uncharacteristic.
Costello has released few perfect albums over his four-decade career (three or four by my count) but every one of his releases is distinctive. Sometimes it’s a genre play (country, classical, adult contemporary), others a thematic one (the childhood nostalgia of Brutal Youth or the short story forming the spine of The Delivery Man).
Elvis Costello’s many reissues of his back catalog have unearthed a lot of excellent tracks. Today’s Random iTunes selection is not among them.
This alternate take of Imperial Bedroom‘s ‘Little Savage’ is nearly incoherent, especially vocally, a fact that Costello himself acknowledges in the disc’s liner notes:
I don’t return to Elvis Costello’s 1991 album Mighty Like a Rose very often, but when it first came out I was in love with it.
A sticker on the album’s cover promised it was his best, most inventive work since Imperial Bedroom, which was overselling it, but it does have its share of baroque gems.
Meet Me In Montauk 