4 Must-Have Albums To Start Your Elvis Costello Vinyl Collection

Many people might have bet against Elvis Costello having longevity when he started his career. He kept a furious recording pace, for one. And his style of breathless diatribes churned out at high tempos seemed relatively unsustainable as well.

Of course, Costello has turned into one of the most durable artists of his or any other era. Which makes the task of choosing four foundational albums for your E.C. vinyl collection quite difficult. But we’re going to give our best go anyway.

‘This Year’s Model’

Costello’s debut album, My Aim Is True, featured session musicians who were loosely assembled to help him bring his musical vision to fruition. By the time of This Year’s Model, he had a band in The Attractions. And what a band they were. Their colorful, melodic, fast-paced chemistry proved the ideal accompaniment for Costello’s verbose lyrical sprints. You can hear it right off the bat in the sub-two-minute opener “No Action”, which says and does more than most rock songs twice its length. There’s not much let-up from that point all the way through the furious finisher “Radio, Radio”, with quick whooshes past classics like “This Year’s Girl” and “Pump It Up” for good measure.

‘Imperial Bedroom’

This album was a bit of a commercial disappointment for Costello. But he got every bit out of it from an artistic sense. Long a Beatles fan, he let the Attractions go wild in the studio with production from former Fab Four engineer Geoff Emerick. As a result, Imperial Bedroom yields a wide range of stylistic flourishes without casting aside the identity of the band. The musically dynamic but lyrically brooding “Beyond Belief” sets the tone. Throughout the album, Costello blurs the line between storytelling and confession, most notably on the stunning “Man Out Of Time”. And nothing that he throws at his band is out of their wheelhouse. This is the absolute must-have in his catalog.

‘Spike’

Costello made some fascinating albums away from the Attractions in the mid-to-late 80s. We could have easily gone with King Of America to represent that era. But Spike deserves the look here, not just because of its brilliance, but also because it went a bit more mainstream than some of his other albums of that era. “Veronica”, the bittersweet, catchy number that he penned with Paul McCartney, put him on the pop charts for the first time in years. The cream of the crop of session players helped him get the job done on an album that really represents his ability as a storyteller. Songs like “Let Him Dangle”, “God’s Comic”, and “Satellite” effortlessly manage a high degree of difficulty.

‘Painted From Memory’

If you’re going to try to capture Costello’s career in just four albums, you must make some sort of accounting for one of his out-of-left-field genre shifts. While they’re all worthy in their way, Painted From Memory stands out because of how well Costello gelled with Burt Bacharach. E.C. reined in some of his lyrical dexterity in favor of emotional truths stated in slightly simpler fashion. Bacharach, as usual, guided the melodies to unexpected territory while providing endlessly affecting arrangements. Songs like “Toledo”, “This House Is Empty Now”, and the title track keep discovering new ways to evoke a broken heart. It all leads up to the colossal closer “God Give Me Strength”, the perfect finishing touch for this impeccable album.

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