Needle Time

  Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Almost Blue [FB 58 392 NLD 1981 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] I've covered many genres over the years, after all my main motivation for blogging was the 'degenrefication' of music. Whilst we started with specific rock genres like post-punk which crossed into electronic industrial and other experimental sounds. Indie, alternative rock and synthpop have also featured heavily over the years before I have eventually dipped into more classic rock, mainstream and quite a lot of jazz.  The hype sticker on Elvis Costello's Almost Blue album tells/warns you exactly what you are about to hear on this record. Let's call this my first dip into country, there won't be much more however there is one album by one very important country music performer in the ripping pipeline.  Recorded in Nashville TN with famed country music producer Billy Sherrill, Almost Blue was a collection of covered standards by the bespectacled one and his band of mer...

  Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True [JC 35037 USA 1978 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] Originally released on UK label Stiff Records (SEEZ 3) in July 1977, Elvis Costello's debut album, My Aim Is True was released across the Atlantic following a deal with Columbia Records. A recent acquisition is this 1978 second pressing from Columbia's own plant in Pitman, New Jersey. To these ears, this pressing has a much fuller sound compared to UK pressing. It's worth recalling that none of the original singles from this album were initially UK hits, and as the album to launch Costello in the US, his fourth single & breakthrough hit,  Watching the Detectives was added to the US release. All the singles from this album are now revered as classics by a true British institution. The singles aside, some of the other album tracks are highly worthy of attention, the wall of sound soul of No Dancing , the garage punk of  Welcome To The Working Week and  Waiting For The End Of The World , th...

  Elvis Costello & The Attractions  - Goodbye Cruel World [MFSL 1-432 USA 2015 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] By his own admission, Elvis Costello's most difficult album with The Attractions. Close to breaking up and having a hard act to follow in Punch The Clock ,  Goodbye Cruel World hardly tickled the hit parade or enthused the critics, however the fan base stuck around ...and this album needs a reappraisal. One single, I Wanna Be Loved stands out revealing a little more pop than Costello's usual subtle political song writing. Perhaps due to his friendship with Paul Weller, this album reminds me much of the way in which the Bard Of Woking had been dabbling in pop music. Weller isn't involved, however Darryl Hall and Green Garside are among the pop stars who do feature on the album. Originally released on F-Beat Records in 1984, my current go-to copy is the 2015 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab repress. The label don't feature this album among their recent confessionals, but i...

  Elvis Costello And The Attractions - Punch The Clock [MFSL 1-389 USA 2013 24-Bit 176.4kHz FLAC] Originally released on F-Beat Records in 1983. This is a rip of my splendidly packaged Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab release, marketed as part of the label's  GAIN 2™ Ultra Analog LP 180g Series. A new week kicks off with the eighth album from London/Anglo-Irish new-wave-pop-blues institution Elvis Costello. It is difficult to keep track of exactly how many albums Declan Patrick MacManus has released, from the early bespectacled punky pre-new wave attitude of My Aim Is True , This Year's Model and Armed Forces , through the jazz, soul and the blues influenced early eighties albums to Punch The Clock , his pop pinnacle. This was the album which finally gave Our Elvis his big American hit,  Everyday I Write The Book . In Britain, we grew up with Elvis Costello and an impressively lengthy string of hit singles between 1977 and 1986. This was also the album where Cos...