Day 330: Elvis Costello & the Attractions – This Year’s Model
Elvis Costello feels like an artist I should know, he crops up surprisingly often, but he’s one of those who have passed me by. Thinking about it, I actually can’t even name a single one of his songs – I’m sure I’ve heard them but nothing comes to mind. To fix this, I thought I’d listen to his sophomore album, This Year’s Model.
Elvis Costello, or Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus, was born in West London in 1954 to a jazz musician father and record shop worker mother. He started playing music and writing songs when he was 14 years old, and he started playing at clubs when he was 16. At 18, he was in a folk duo called Rusty, before joining a rock band called Flip City. Then at 22, he was booking solo gigs when he wasn’t playing with Flip City, borrowing his first name from Elvis Presley and his surname from the name his father performed as.
This Year’s Model was released in 1978 as Elvis Costello’s second album, accompanied by the backing band that played with him for most of his career, as opposed to the California country band Clover who played on his debut. It peaked at number 4 on the UK albums chart and was critically well-received.
I started off listening to his 1977 debut My Aim Is True and for some reason I just didn’t find myself having too much to say about it, I know people love it but to me it just felt a little bit half-baked, it didn’t scratch the itch that I had. This album is much more like it, the sound is much tighter and sharper due to the change in his backing band and it just feels a lot more complete.
I don’t know if this makes much sense as an explanation but I feel like this is the stepping stone between the newer forms of rock that he played, like punk and new wave, and popular music from the ‘50s or early ‘60s, there’s something about the songwriting that feels like it’s both older and more contemporary at the same time. It’s not even close to being any sort of legacy tribute album though, it’s still a million miles away from that. For one, the lyrics are more sophisticated, and there’s a lot more snark and angst to the album. I think I expected some peppier yearner rock, or I’m honestly not even sure what I expected, maybe I based that whole image on the fact that he’s a guy who’s famously wearing thick-rimmed glasses.
The album ends with “Radio Radio”, which Costello used to rabble-rouse a little bit on American television: they’d been asked to play on SNL as the original schedule got scuppered by the Sex Pistols having visa issues. Their label was insisting that they play the song “Less Than Zero”, but Costello didn’t think it was appropriate – the song is about the British fascist politician Oswald Mosley and Costello didn’t think American audiences would get it. They played the song for a moment until Costello stopped the band and said “I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here”. They then played “Radio Radio” instead as a critique on the commercialisation of broadcasting. Apparently Lorne Michaels got so angry he gave them the finger for the duration of the performance and banned them from SNL.
I love nothing more than harmless rebellion, and getting on telly to announce “I wanna bite the hand that feeds me / I wanna bite that hand so badly / I want to make them wish they'd never seen me” is nothing if not that. As much as I love the spirit, I think this is an album I need to sit with for a little bit. I like it now, but I have a feeling I could really get into some Elvis Costello with a few more spins, or I could come off it completely. I’m giving it a tentative 8/10, but it could go into either direction.