Costello made a big splash right off with a venomous attack on pop romance. He sneers about sex (“Watching the Detectives”), politics (“Less Than Zero”), and religion (“Waiting for the End of the World”), but the one he’ll be stuck singing for the rest of his life is the ballad “A... 

 This Year’s Model is the peak of the angry young Elvis, channeling the rage into the furious hooks of “Lip Service,” “Lipstick Vogue,” and “No Action.” 

 Armed Forces soon followed This Year's Model. The shrill, cluttered keyboards, almost all treble, suit the paranoia of the politically charged lyrics (“She’s my self-touch typewriter/And I’m the great dictator”). 

 Get Happy loosens up for a tour de force of 20 tracks imitating Booker T. and the MG’s at Ramones velocity, although “Opportunity” and “Riot Act” showed what a supple ballad singer Elvis had become.  

 Taking Liberties and Out of Our Idiot collect some of the stray B-sides and outtakes Costello was leaving in his wake; most of these songs appear as bonus tracks on the various CD reissues of the Costello catalogue.  

 Costello spent the next few years stretching out stylistically, starting with the well-chosen, miserably sung country covers of Almost Blue.  

 Trust has always been underrated because there’s no real angle–just 14 brilliantly barbed pop tunes about men paying the wages of masculinity and suffering for their sins, with Pete Thomas’s punchiest drumming and Steve Nieve’s glossiest piano. 

 The Cole Porter homage Imperial Bedroom overdresses some excellent songs (“Beyond Belief,” “Man Out of Time”) and a few duds (“The Long Honeymoon”) with layers of vocal overdubs, strings, horns, harpsichords, guitar solos, and Sgt. Pepper studio gimmicks.  

 Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World imitate Top Forty radio, actually more of a stretch for Elvis than country or Cole Porter, with successes like the anti-Thatcher protest “Shipbuilding” and fab real-world hit “Every Day I Write the Book.”  

 Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World imitate Top Forty radio, actually more of a stretch for Elvis than country or Cole Porter, with successes like the anti-Thatcher protest “Shipbuilding” and fab real-world hit “Every Day I Write the Book.”  

 The Attractions returned for Blood & Chocolate, one of Elvis’s loudest, funniest records. Although the songs have the rugged acoustic strum of King of America, the Attractions’ ham-fisted garage rock animates the Celt-folk passion of “Tokyo Storm Warning” and “Crimes of Paris.”  

 King of America is where Costello harkens to his folkie roots, busting out the acoustic guitar, hooking up with T-Bone Burnett and an unlikely passel of grizzled session dudes for a masterpiece.  

 Taking Liberties and Out of Our Idiot collect some of the stray B-sides and outtakes Costello was leaving in his wake; most of these songs appear as bonus tracks on the various CD reissues of the Costello catalogue.  

 Girls Girls Girls is an eccentric compilation annotated by the maestro himself, who’s always worth reading (his liner notes to the 1994 reissue of Goodbye Cruel World begin, “Congratulations! You have just purchased our worst album!”). 

 Spike features more all-star cameos (from Paul McCartney to the Dirty Dozen Brass Band), but except for the righteously Thatcher-bashing “Tramp the Dirt Down,” it’s pretty words and no action, losing vague tunes in grandiose arrangements.  

 The sequel to Spike, Mighty Like a Rose vanished without a trace. 

 The Juliet Letters is–get this–a classical song cycle about Romeo and Juliet, but it’s no “Mystery Dance.” 

 Brutal Youth is a lightweight Attractions reunion. 

 The covers collection has sharp takes on Mose Allison’s “Everybody’s Crying Mercy” and Randy Newman’s “I’ve Been Wrong Before”; the 2004 Rhino reissue adds a must-hear bonus disc with a country version of Bob Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” and takes on... 

 All This Useless Beauty offers muted balladry like the poignant “I Want to Vanish.”  

 Costello & Nieve is a five-disc box of intimate 1996 live performances. 

 Kojak Variety was shaping up to be Elvis’s best ‘90s album until his Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted From Memory. What could have been a camp joke becomes a magnificently bittersweet career summary for both gentlemen.  

 The Sweetest Punch reinterprets these songs Painted From Memory with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. 

 When I Was Cruel, a belated and gratuitous return to guitar rock, finds Elvis thriving again on his commitment to tricky hooks, funny lyrics, and the head-scratching career moves that will keep his fans on their toes for the rest of his days.  

 North is a return to jazz ballads, with Costello sounding a little stiff and dusty.  

 Costello has remained compulsively prolific, to the point where the music seems hasty and distracted on principle. But the restless pace is part of the point; by now nobody’s surprised when Costello shows up with an orchestral ballet score. 

 My Flame Burns Blue interprets his songbook with a Dutch avant-jazz group, the Metropole Orkest, with an ace New Orleans R&B cover, Dave Bartholomew’s “That’s How You Got Killed Before”… 

 The Delivery Man and Secret Profane & Sugarcane pay homage to Southern roots-rock, with songs both inspired (“Bedlam”) and forced (“Scarlet Tide”). 

 He expands the New Orleans concept into The River In Reverse, playing sideman to the legendary Allen Touissant.  

 A rock throwaway dedicated to the guy who invented ramen noodles, Momofuku was quickly recorded and released to vinyl and digital download, with a CD release coming later.  

 The Delivery Man and Secret Profane & Sugarcane pay homage to Southern roots-rock, with songs both inspired (“Bedlam”) and forced (“Scarlet Tide”).