All This Useless Beauty (With Bonus Disc)

Limited EP backs the title cut with'Almost Ideal Eyes', 'The Other End Of The Telescope' (per-formed by Sleeper) and 'Distorted Angel' (remixed by Tricky)Comes in a slipcase sleeve.***THIS IS SINGLE #4 IN A SERIES OF 4. OTHER 3 SELECTION #'SARE 249332, 25

Elvis Costello's final album for Warner Bros. might have been even more widely ignored had he and the Attractions not gone on tour to support it. The result led to a final split, but All This Useless Beauty still ended up doing little business. This reissue, part of Rhino's first wave of a Costello remaster/refurbishing campaign, provides an opportunity to hear mostly exemplary songwriting and assuredly masterful performances. Darkly observant and even witty, tracks like "The Other End of the Telescope" (a rewrite of a Costello-Aimee Mann collaboration), "Distorted Angel," and "Starting to Come to Me" could take their places on anyone's mix tape. (The snarling "Complicated Shadows," one of the few full-on rockers here, even made it as far as a Sopranos episode.) Costello overreaches on the title track, but its sophisticated tone works just about everywhere else it's tried. The bonus disc of demos and one-offs is necessarily a sonic hodgepodge, but it's a damn fine long-player on its own. Costello's liner notes are, as always, a must. --Rickey Wright