Bulldog

As promised a few hours ago...


And here we have my collection of various worthwhile rarities from Elvis Costello's back-catalogue. Although a lot of enthusiastic digging through the vaults for the double-disc Rhino reissues of most of his albums has unearthed a lot of great and rare material, there are still many, many rare recordings which remain officially unreleased. Many more than the above in fact. These are a few of the ones I've managed to find for myself over the years.

Some of these sound like nothing you'd expect Costello to record, and as such are among my favourites of his. For starters, both versions of a Town Called Big Nothing (the Really Big Nothing version of which was officially released on the now out of print Rykodisc reissue of Blood and Chocolate) are nice, playful numbers that sound like something off of some spaghetti western soundtrack. Long Journey Home, featuring Paddy Maloney of the Chieftans, is a pretty spectacular, Celtic-afflicted song, initially used on the soundtrack of a documentary about Irish-American history (I forget the exact title of it). Two more of Costello's best songs, My Mood Swings (one the Big Lebowski fans among us may recognise) and Real Emotional Girl, are given orchestral revamps by his one-time writing partners the Brodsky Quartet. Weird Nightmare, taken from a Charles Mingus tribute album, sounds a few million miles away from My Aim Is True as well.

Besides the live tracks which make up tracks 15-18 (yes, that is a Jimmy Cliff song you see among them), the rest of the above is made from various outtakes, such as a pretty neat Dirty Rotten Shame from Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. The North outtakes, including the elusive title track, the jazzy Too Blue and Impatience, are basically better than 90% of the album they were left off and well worth hearing too. Do You Know What I'm Saying came from the Brutal Youth sessions, and it's an alright song I guess. Nothing spectacular though. There's the jovial, brassy Party Party from just before the Punch the Clock sessions (and easily the best drinking song Costello would ever write), and the passable Don't Throw Your Love Away (the origin of which I can't remember). Egypt is a neat, though again unspectacular cover of a Nick Lowe song, while a Penny For Your Thoughts is a home demo from 2007, and may well have been considered for inclusion of Momofuku at some point.

So, as you may have noticed by now, it's a hotch-potch of rarities, and probably a good idea to download it if you've got a bunch of his albums already, and not so much if you're a beginner when it comes to Elvis Costello. A few of these are, I think, some of his best songs as well, so well worth having in that case.