The Very Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Full title: The Very Best Of Elvis Costello & The Attractions (1977-86).Producers include: Nick Lowe, Billy Sherrill, Geoff Emerick, Clive Langer, Alan Winstanley.Producers include: Nick Lowe, Geoff Emerick, Elvis Costello, Mitchell Froom, Clive Langer.Recorded between 1976 and 1999.Personnel: Elvis Costello (vocals, guitar).This definitive collection offers the most penetrating overview available of Costello's work with the Attractions. Costello's early albums changed the face of pop music by harnessing punk's energy to a leaner, more incisive aesthetic that included pop hooks, virtually inventing new wave in the process. While the Attractions didn't appear until Costello's second album, his debut's moving, unsentimental ballad "Alison" nevertheless remains one of his most loved songs. The sound tightened up when the Attractions appeared, as evidenced by the angular, reggae-influenced "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" and the Dylan-meets-Johnny-Rotten anthem of the disillusioned, "Pump It Up."Elvis moved further afield in the following years, from the lush, almost baroque pop of ARMED FORCES' "Accidents Will Happen" to the heartbreaking ballad "Good Year For The Roses," from EC's C&W album ALMOST BLUE. "Everyday I Write the Book" is as close as any mere mortal will ever come to writing a Smokey Robinson tune. True to Costello's jittery, neurotic image, things close out on an obsessive note with "I Want You," an unsettling tale of uncontrolled desire. The depth of Costello's oeuvre is too vast to be captured on one disc, but this one comes mighty close.It's no small task to summarize the career of Elvis Costello on two discs. Not only did he define New Wave in the late 1970s and early '80s, along the way he ventured into everything from jazz balladry to honky-tonk country and Stax-style R&B. THE VERY BEST OF does a credible job of capturing the mercurial songsmith's many moods. His punk-goes-to-college Angry Young Man phase is well represented ("Radio Radio," "Pump It Up," et al), and his expansion into more sophisticated pop realms is covered as well ("Accidents Will Happen").EC's fondness for soul can be discerned in a number of tunes, including the Smokey Robinson-like "Everyday I Write the Book," and his status as reigning champ of the knockout love song is assured by the inescapably poignant "Alison." In between such classics, there are a host of tracks that are lesser known but no less impressive, showing that Costello was always as prolific as he was powerful. This collection differs from the similarly titled single-disc anthology on Rykodisc in that it goes on to encompass Costello's Warner Brothers years, which entail everything from impossibly catchy Paul McCartney collaborations ("Veronica," "So Like Candy") to the piano-led lieder-pop of "I Want to Vanish."

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