"...This Poll..." - The "Spike" Poll

The two MacManus/McCartney tracks are repectively best and worst on this somewhat patchy but still good and underrated album.

Voted "Veronica", but I also really like "Any King's Shilling", "...This Town..." and "Baby Plays Around".

SO HARD.

Toss-up between Stalin Malone and Miss Macbeth.

Stalin Malone.

The first EC album I owned, and the one to which I least want to return. Even "Tramp the Dirt Down" is overrated (and overarranged) as an anti-Thatcher number. "Veronica" is the easiest.

There's an acoustic version of Deep Dark Truthful Mirror out there that's best of all. But on this record it's This Town.

He was amazing on the tour for this - solo acoustic, with a solo Nick Lowe opening (and running around in a gorilla suit during EC's set). I have much greater respect for these songs stripped of the production, especially "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror."

yeah i saw the tour. i thought it was a wolf suit. anyway, it was good, even though he forgot the words to "oliver's army." (people started singing them while he was paused, trying to remember, and he snapped "i wrote the fucking song.) he also refused to sing "the angels want to wear my red shoes" during the ostensible audience-request portion. what a grump.

i really like about half this album. guess i'd vote for "baby plays around" -- maybe my 2nd favorite ec torch song, after "almost blue."

right, now *this* album is the song with "a butterfly drinks a turtles tears"...

I watched the same nature programme he nicked the line from. And thought the same thing as EC did, however he has a record and publishing deal and I do/did not.

It might have been a wolf; my memory says gorilla. He was very friendly and played everything asked at the gig I saw. I remember he was excited when someone picked "Green Shirt" as he said he hadn't played it for a long time.

"Baby Plays Around" is one of his best vocal performances.

this was the first costello album I ever bought and I loved loved loved it at the time. it shortly went to being one of my least favorites. even now I have a hard time listening to most of it, I think Mighty Like a Rose is way stronger (and of course King of America is the best of the three). Anyway, scrub the dixie land brass of this and some of the failed experiments and it's alright. The Macca collabs are great, and I really liked "last boat leaving" at the time. Baby Plays Around is good but it kind of prefigures that North period so maybe not so good now.

these songs are all terrible:

Chewing Gum
Stalin Malone
Pads, Paws and Claws
Any King's Shilling

that's like a quarter of the album

and I guess I confused 'this town' with a macca collab in my above post. ignore me

i also like "satellite." i'm not sure he knows exactly what he's on about, but i like the chorus and there are some good lines.

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