The 1981 Listening Post - Elvis Costello - Almost Blue

 

Elvis Costello - Almost Blue

#506

By Chris Natale

Elvis Costello

Almost Blue

Genre: Elvis Costello

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Chris’ Rating: 4 out of 5

When recording artists churn out records with the frequency of Stephen King novels, it’s not always a good thing.  It can certainly be that they’re experiencing a creative wellspring and simply need to express that firehose of creativity.  It can also, however, be an attempt to keep the cash flowing or satisfy a record contract in order to move on.  Almost Blue falls in the former category. 

In the first 10 years of Elvis’ recording career, he released 11 albums.  Almost Blue was released in the end of 1981, which opened with the album that grabbed my attention that year, Trust.  It wasn’t until later that I heard Almost Blue, Elvis’ tribute to some of American Country Music’s most accomplished songwriters.  

The first track, Hank Williams’ “Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used To Do?” seemed to serve as the flushing of the New Wave/punk  sound that would then settle into a country groove for the rest of the album.  It may be the only track on the album that feels like it’s been put through the Elvis Costello machine.  The rest of the record sounds more like the songs inhabiting the singer rather than the other way around.    Covering songs from artists ranging from Hank & Merle Haggard (“Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”) to George Jones “Color of the Blues” and “Brown to Blue”) & Gram Parsons (“I’m Your Toy” & “How Much I’ve Lied”), he certainly covered a range of the genre’s stars.  

Almost Blue was the album that marked the trailhead of the path for Elvis to depart from the New Wave sound that he was so strongly associated with.  It would be joined later in his career by songs including “All This Useless Beauty” and “Almost Blue” and collaborative albums including Painted from Memory with Burt Bacharach and For the Stars with Anne Sofie van Otter.  This kind of wandering in and out of genres has made Elvis Costello such an interesting and influential artist.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6Y234kkXewBp0CjanUQW3w?si=gP01aZ5MSwa0AvS8Hcwd0w