You have great taste! I am not really the target demo, but this new Beyonce album is excellent. The baseline for "Plastic off the sofa" is an all-timer.
Thanks - my five favorite artists in the last couple of years (meaning that I have really grown to appreciate them, not necessarily new artists) are Sparks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Elvis Costello, Yo La Tengo, and Eleventh Dream Day.
Rhino came out with "deluxe" two disk versions of Elvis Costello albums about 20 years ago. The 2nd disk for "Punch the Clock" is his demos for the album, and they are like 10× better than the released album. They hired a "hot" 80s producing team in "Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley" (who also did your next album and Costello's absolute worst album by a mile in "Goodbye Cruel World") and they jacked the tempo on every track to the same frenetic frantic BPM and buried everything in too many horns that covered over great lyrics. It is so much better as a folk album. Anyway, that's my 2 cents - it's really great songwriting buries behind too much 80s overproduction. Oh, also Shipbuilding is one of the most underrated songs of all time. It makes me want to cry. For me, I've been doing Echo and the Bunnymen this weekend:
Yea, just finished watching it with my mother and even she remarked how good and unique they are. I am regretting not listening to them sooner, but thankful that I have found out about them and it really is better late than never. They are the best example of an artist that I can think of that has never cared how many albums they sell or how popular they have become (or not), they are going to do music the way they want to do it. And that is why we love them so much.
Like Bob Dylan's bootleg series, if Elvis only released the bonus discs of his first 10 years of music from those Rhino releases he would be an all timer.
just to note that Clive Langer composed the music for shipbuilding… Also, if you haven’t heard the Robert Wyatt version, do so POST HASTE.
More Elvis - after these 2 albums, there will be 6 left: Elvis Costello - All This Useless Beauty Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach - Painted From Memory
My favorite story from the doc was about how the record company told them they need to "make some music that you can dance too." so they did..lol
