This Year's Model

Chrille · Post by **Chrille** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:16 pm

This Year's Model seems to be one of E.C's most popular and well liked albums. Am I the only one who's bored with it?

As with Armed Forces, I liked this one instantly, but unlike Armed Forces and E.C's other albums, I'm very tired of TYM (especially The Beat, Pump It Up and Chelsea). I do think all the songs are good, but there are only a handful I still really like listening to.

Lipstick Vogue is one of my favourite tracks though and I love the b-sides Big Tears & Crawling to the USA.

Am I the only one who feels this way about this album? What are your thoughts on it?

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 5:35 pm

Quite the opposite in fact.
There are a couple of songs on Armed Forces which I'm not that fond of and which probably haven't aged very well.
This Year's Model, on the other hand, stood the test of time perfectly, imho, and remains one of my top 5 EC albums. It's got almost everything I like about Elvis - great melodies, energy and intensity, clever lyrics, Attractions playing at their ferocious best.
Brilliant stuff !!

strangerinthehouse · Post by **strangerinthehouse** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:25 pm

I love This Year's Model.

Everytime i take a road trip it is the first album played. It's so fast and mean I can belt out everysong (bad, alone in the car singing) along with EC in my stereo. it is probably the second EC album i bought that i could not stop listening to it, after Brutal Youth. Also I got the reissue for $9.99 used and spotless.

Chrille · Post by **Chrille** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 2:55 am

Forgive me!

I listened to it again last night on my new stereo and speakers and it came back to me how good it is, especially when played at a loud volume. Still not good enough to break into the top 5 though

Neil. · Post by **Neil.** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 4:32 am

For me it's essential. If you want to introduce someone to Elvis, this is the one. The urgency of it - the competitive playing. The entire band are trying to outdo one another and prove themselves with incredibly melodic playing. The arrangements are spiky and thrilling.

Only drawback is, I find that the songs from it don't translate well live, as they're so spiky they need real concentration to sing to full effect, and if they're done too fast - as Chelsea and Pump It Up are these days - they tend to get flattened out. They need to be pert and brittle rather than raced through, and they need the separation of the studio to really work.

Chrille · Post by **Chrille** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 6:07 am

Although I've never seen him live, listening to bootlegs it seems that very few songs sound better live and that E.C isn't too good at doing two things at the same time on stage.

migdd · Post by **migdd** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 9:13 am

Whenever I find myself ranking EC albums (mostly for threads on this board - I don't really think in those terms most of the time), Armed Forces and TYM are almost always neck-in-neck, side-by-side, back-to-back.

These 2 albums, although both very different, are forever paired in my mind, probably because I bought them wiithin a few months of each other when they were both originally released and I associate them with that time.

They are both great albums in there own way. I don't play them as much these days - EC has grown as an artist since 1979 and I really wore these out 25 years ago. But every once in a while I'll give them a spin - what fun that is!!!

King Hoarse · Post by **King Hoarse** » Fri Jul 01, 2005 8:48 pm

It's a great record, but because it's the perfect Elvis introducer I've heard it too much. Also, the keyboard sound annoys me almost as much as the one on GCW, and I much prefer the amphetamine-fuelled late seventies live versions of most of these tracks. I'm a bit of a speedfreak.

(The Swedish LP, which featured Watching The Detectives at the end of the first side, was pressed at the wrong speed - faster! - and that's the one I fell in love with. That's why I hate listening to something like You Belong To Me on the CD version. Just thinking about it is making me sleepy.)

That said, the songwriting on most of this is incredible, which is only true for about half of AF, IMO.

Extreme Honey · Post by **Extreme Honey** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:03 pm

Well I agree with Chrille. This record never grew old on me, i just never liked it all that much. I prefer his softer and slower material. But all Costello albums are great. The best thing about this record, in my opinion, is the road it built for his future, caus' if this album flopped, he would have gone back to the bars! Pump it up, radio radio and this year's girl are still pretty good songs despite the fact he was somewhere along the lines of Jimi Hendrix on his daily trips and Phil Collin's awful songs.

noiseradio · Post by **noiseradio** » Sat Jul 02, 2005 11:39 pm

<-------

Obviously, I still dig it.