The first Elvis album
I listen to doesn’t have
Elvis’s voice anywhere
on it, or hardly.
A testament to Costello’s
cross-cultural reach, Elvis
handed over 16 of the
original instrumental
tracks from This Year’s Model
to 16+ different Spanish speaking
singers. As a listener, and a
huge Elvis fan, and a guy
who does not speak Spanish,
it’s a trip to experience this record,
an early Costello favorite of mine,
in another language.
All these vocal performances are
astoundingly good, by the way,
but suddenly I can’t understand
a word to all of these songs
I practically know by heart, and
it becomes almost impossible
to sing along in English, which,
by the way, would defeat
the purpose. It is a profoundly
successful experiment, and,
for an album whose instrumental tracks
were all recorded in 1978,
it simply just kicks ass sonically,
and the original performances
by The Attractions stand out still
as some of the greatest rock
performances of the era. As a
drummer, I find Pete Thomas’s
work on “Lipstick Vogue” mind-
blowingly good. The final bonus of
this record is that it includes
three or four tracks that were
not on the original album,
an expanded This Year’s Model,
the Spanish Model.
Es Bueno.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Spanish Model, Universal Music Company, 2023, black vinyl.
FYI: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response for each artist. These things look like a duck, but they don’t quack like a duck. Hence: “poem-like-thing.” Some artists, Bowie and now Elvis Costello, because of their elevated place in my musical imagination, and because I may have a ton of their stuff on vinyl, deserve more than one poem-like-thing. This is my second Elvis entry. At least one, maybe two more to come.
michael jarmer 