Albums by this artist

I have this rock fantasy where my tremendously popular band comes back from an incredibly successful tour and announces we'll playing a seven-night stand at Chicago's Metro. (Like many of my rock fantasies, this dream is Cheap Trick-inspired.) The catch is, each night, we'll be playing one of our choices for the seven most influential records of all time. The whole album, in the original sequence. The first night we'll do Revolver. Then probably White Light/White Heat. The third night we do This Year's Model.

Technically speaking, This Year's Model isn't the best Elvis Costello album. Trust is probably better songwriting-wise, Imperial Bedroom is superior in terms of production, and Live At El Mocambo is the best document of the Attractions as a band. But This Year's Model is tremendous fun to play along to, on any instrument. The songs are as fast and as jagged as punk songs, but there's chances for you to show off your musicality too, like the white British reggae lilt of "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" and the perfect waltz-time ballad "Little Triggers." "Pump It Up" features one of the all-time great basslines. "Lipstick Vogue" has some of the most intense drumwork you'll ever hear. "No Action" has backing vocals to die for.

And it's all just absurdly lyrically brilliant, too. Any songwriter who listens to Elvis Costello is a depressed songwriter. He's just too good. Like no one since Dylan, Elvis manages to cram his songs, fast and slow, with quotable lines and expressions so brilliant you have to sigh with appreciation. "He's got the keys to the car, they are the keys to the kingdom," is Costello's summary of teenage life on "No Action." "The things you see are getting hard to swallow / You're easily led but you're much too scared to follow," "You Belong To Me" has it. There are a thousand band names and album titles hiding amongst the dense wordplay of This Year's Model.

Costello plays the traditional pop misfit figure -- pretty melodies, threatening lyrics -- better than anyone. "If I'm gonna go down, you're gonna go with me," he sings sweetly on "Hand In Hand," while Steve Nieve's organ chirps and a 12-string guitar doodles merrily. A second later he's telling us he's an "animal" and saying "You can't show me any kind of hell / That I haven't seen already." Wow! Badass!

Of course, my hypothetical band would have to struggle mightily to even approximate the quality of the performances on This Year's Model. Bruce Thomas is an extraordinary bassist. His lines on this record fight with Costello's voice for providing melodic focus, and yet never lose the rhythm. Pete Thomas is right behind him on the drums, steady when necessary and insane when appropriate. And Nieve, of course, is so suited to playing Costello's songs that he's the only Attraction still sticking with the old bastard today. Bloody essential.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.