This Year's Model

iTunes Review

For his second album, Elvis Costello assembled the Attractions, one of the finest backing groups in rock history, to deliver the knockout punch to what time has shown to be some of Costello’s best and most enduring material. The playing is stripped and primal, yet each reissue of the original album has featured jarring, widescreen-stereo sound that makes the overall impact far more sweeping than seems possible for this little quartet. But from the first nervous whispers of “No Action,” it’s apparent that Costello and crew are running an amphetamine-laced race against time. Each song is either played like a manic sprint (“Pump It Up,” “Lipstick Vogue”) or an epiphanic moment swelling with tension (“The Beat,” “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea”). Costello’s verbal daggers, his punkish contempt for the status quo, and his fear and suspicion of love color this collection in sharp contrasts. “Radio, Radio” literally “bites the hand that feeds,” as Costello harshly (and rightfully) critiques radio programmers’ conservative playlists and dares them to take a chance on him. One of Costello’s finest.