Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Since being bought by the Warner Brothers group, the scrappy and well-respected Rhino label has carried out a welcome reissue campaign focusing on classic Warner albums, including the back catalog of Elvis Costello. That program continues with three releases that actually span his early Columbia and later Warner work: This Year’s Model (his 1978 sophomore effort), Blood & Chocolate (1986) and 1994’s brilliant Brutal Youth. All three will be essential for Costello fans, but Blood & Chocolate may be the most revelatory of this batch; with its bonus disc of unreleased songs, rarities and alternate versions, it reveals a somewhat lighter dimension to what is one of Costello’s darker and more brooding efforts, one which turned out to be the last album he would make with The Attractions for eight years. Recommended.