Elvis Costello: Out of Our Idiot

Elvis Costello: Out of Our Idiot

1987

Demon Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Seven Day Weekend  2. Turning the Town Red  3. Heathen Town  4. The People's Limousine  5. So Young  6. American Without Tears No. 2  7. Get Yourself Another Fool  8. Walking on Thin Ice  9. Blue Chair  10. Baby It's You  11. From Head to Toe  12. Shoes Without Heels  13. Baby's Got a Brand New Hairdo  14. The Flirting Kind  15. Black Sails in the Sunset  16. Imperial Bedroom  17. The Stamping Ground


Don't let the "Various Artists" emblazoned on the spine fool ya.... This is a collections of Elvis Costello's outtakes, B-Sides, collaborations, etc...Although this particular album is out of print, all this material ended up as bonus tracks on Elvis' CD reissues, but this is a case of where the presentation makes all the difference...Sure,  I heard all these tracks on the CD reissues but many of them seemed to go in one ear and out the other, buried under endless demos and draggy alternate takes...But when all the excess is pruned away and only the finest flowers presented, this is as listenable as any other prime EC disc...Which shouldn't surprise die-hard Costello fans, after all he pulled off a similar win with 1980's "Taking Liberties"...



Damn, just about everything on this is good...Even the freakin' Yoko Ono cover (" Walking on Thin Ice")  rules...Sure, there's a lesser track here and there...For example, I find the soul ballad "Get Yourself Another Fool" a taaad on the dull side, "The Flirting Kind" is a little fruity for my tastes, and I would point out "Baby's Got a Brand New Hairdo" as a prime example of  Elvis on upbeat autopilot, but  that's seriously what?  Three songs? Out of 17? That's means there's about 14 flat-out great tracks on here...I'll single out a few so this post is more than two paragraphs long:

Keeping with my month-long Jimmy Cliff theme, the album kicks off with an Elvis/Jimmy collaboration "Seven Day Weekend" from the "Club Paradise" soundtrack...


(Now, I know for a fact I've seen Club Paradise but I'll be damned if I can remember a single damn detail about it...I remember "Apeman" by the Kinks being in the film...I remember seeing Robin Williams mugging for an hour and a half, but the rest is a blur...)

You'd assume that a duet with Jimmy Cliff would be reggae/island-themed type of thing, but you'd be wrong...It's uptempo "Get Happy!" new-wave soul...See, I first heard this song on the bonus disc of "Blood & Chocolate" which is arguably Elvis' bitterest, dourest, most divorce-y album,...As a result,  hearing Elvis and Jimmy enthusiastically counting down the days of their vacation in the most slap-happy manner possible sounded ridiculously out of place in that context...But boy, as a rousing album opener it's a whole 'nother story...It psyches you up for the whole shebang...

"Heathen Town" is a song I would place in the pantheon of great Elvis tracks...It's the type of thing he does best: Wry, weary, wired, with an easy-flowing melody that you can't believe someone hasn't written before...Although to be perfectly honest, I kinda prefer the acoustic take that appeared on the bonus disc for "Punch the Clock" (so there's one score for the bonus discs I guess) but either way it's a can't-miss for fans...

The M.I.A title track for "Imperial Bedroom" is here too...I still maintain he should have replaced one of that album's more paint-drying moments with this track..A modest, acidic waltz that would have given that album a bit more of an edge...The "Imperial Bedroom" album starts out sharp but softens out as it stretches on...I think placing this near the end could have snapped it back into shape when it most needed it...Oh well, program your own track listing, I guess...

I also love the duet with T-Bone Burnett on "The People's Limousine" (credited to "The Coward Brothers")...A down-home roots rocker that brings back pleasant memories of my much-beloved "King of America"...Holy shit, it just struck me that T-Bone is biting Dylan so hard here...If I didn't see his name on the credits I might have  thought it was him...No wait, those harmonies on the chorus are too nice for Dylan...Never mind...Oh, and if you're a big "King of America" fan, there's also a cool alternate take of "American Without Tears" that's a bit closer to Elvis' usual new wave style...I never realized what a close relative this song is to "New Amsterdam" before I had heard this version...

Even if you have most (hell, even all) of these songs scattered amongst 10 or so bonus discs, I'd still recommend picking this up if you run across it cheap...Or better yet, burn yourself a custom copy from those bonus discs using your computer's disc drive (maybe toss "Shatterproof" on there too, while yer at it...)...It gives you a better overview of Elvis' 80's output than any greatest hits album on the market despite not having a single hit on it...

Here's "The People's Limousine" by Elvis Costello...Errr...The Coward Brothers...Whatever...Enjoy...