Elvis Costello: This Year's Model

 Elvis Costello: This Year's Model

1978

Columbia Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl & Compact Disc

Track Listing:

Vinyl: 1. No Action  2. This Year's Girl  3.The Beat  4. Pump it Up  5. Little Triggers  6. You Belong to Me  7. Hand in Hand  8. Lip Service  9.. Living in Paradise  10. Lipstick Vogue  11.  Radio, Radio

Compact Disc: : 1. No Action  2. This Year's Girl  3.The Beat  4. Pump it Up  5. Little Triggers  6. You Belong to Me  7. Hand in Hand  8. (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea  9. Lip Service  10. Living in Paradise  11. Lipstick Vogue  12. Night Rally  13.  Radio, Radio  14. Big Tears  15. Crawling to the USA  16. Running Out of Angels  17. Green Shirt (demo)  18. Big Boys (demo)


Oh, man...Now we're talking...Listening to this back to back with "My Aim is True" is enough to blow your head off... If Elvis seemed a little cranky on that album he's absolutely vicious here...Tearing down fascists, stagnant radio programmers and all those girls tantalizingly out of  reach all the while cranking out some of the catchiest new wave ever made...

Just like the last album, the first thing you hear is Elvis' acapella voice. Only this time, after he sings, "I don't want to kiss you, I don't want to touch," the music unexpectedly explodes like dime-store dynamite!   The addition of the Attractions is the key difference here.. In fact I'd probably single out Elvis as the weak link musically (although he picks up the slack with his virtuoso lyrics) since keyboardist Steve Naive, and the airtight rhythm section of Bruce and Pete Thomas are so jaw-droppingly amazing...And Nick Lowe's bright and tight production gives the whole thing a sleek, appealingly plastic sheen...I can't say enough good things about the album's sonics...



And the songs! As much as I love "Less Than Zero" and "Welcome to the Working Week," they honestly don't hold a candle to this album's rousing anthems (the stomping, glammy "Pump it Up" or the nervy, seething " (I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea .")



My vinyl copy cuts "Night Rally" and "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea"  for some ungodly reason (those are two of the best songs, dammit!).  Oh well, at least they're kind enough to include the "Radio, Radio" single, which is possibly the group's finest moment...Here Elvis mercilessly rails against commercial radio (and this was back when radio didn't have Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry on it! So one can only imagine what a young Elvis Costello would  have to say nowadays... ), and who could forget the legendary Saturday Night Live Performance where he stopped live TV to switch from "Less Than Zero" to "Radio, Radio"

  (but am I the only person who was kinda sad that he cut that breakneck version of "Less Than Zero" short?)

 The CD however, includes the deleted songs,  but also keeps "Radio, Radio" and adds a whole fistful of outtakes and demos to sweeten the deal, and they're all excellent, although I'm unclear why the demos of "Green Shirt" and "Big Boys" are included here and not on the "Armed Forces" reissue. But who cares, these stripped-down  acoustic demos rule the world. Why, oh why did he never record a proper version of "Running Out of Angels"?  It sounds like it would have fit in nicely on "Armed Forces."

(The album was originally packaged with an additional 7 inch featuring the song "Stranger in the House" and a cover of the Damned's "Neat Neat Neat." My version doesn't have this unfortunately (and come to think of it, neither does my CD...) So if you were shorted too, here's "Stranger in the House" ... (Can't find "Neat, Neat. Neat" though, sorry...)

)

"This Year's Model" still stands as one of the best albums of the punk era. The kind of good, mean fun that Elvis built his long career on, and the best part is, he's just warming up...This was the first in a run of fantastic albums...We'll get to more of them a bit later though... Here's "You Belong to Me" by Declan Preseley...Enjoy....