Seven Song Spin, MacManus Gang Edition

For this week's playlist, I've selected only pieces written or performed by Elvis Costello, whose new album Hey Clockface just dropped last Friday. Its eclecticism has been noted in most reviews, but this is hardly news to anyone who's been paying attention. The versatility on display just in this playlist doesn't even scratch the surface; I could make a dozen such lists to highlight other sounds he's explored, from soul to jazz to Irish folk to orchestral. But this will have to do for now...

This entire playlist can be found here.

Weird Big Band: For me the highlight of his uneven but still underrated 2002 record When I Was Cruel is "15 Petals," a wild pentatonic fandango built on a jagged guitar line and festooned with crashing horns. By all evidence a love letter to his second wife, Pogues bassist Cait O'Riordan, recorded in the last year of their marriage; the tumult of this tune suggests a flame too hot not too cool down.

Ironic Ventriloquism: Speaking of Cait O'Riordan, she and Elvis tossed off a series of pop/punk demos over a weekend when Wendy James, the lost Spice Girl who fronted one-hit wonder Transvision Vamp, asked Elvis to write a few songs for her. He and O'Riordan ended up writing a whole record for her. Now Ain't the Time for Your Tears is extremely uneven, and more than a little tinged with contempt, but no song captures the record's potential for winking self-skewering than the churning banger "Puppet Girl," about a pop star mouthing a prefab script and following someone else's gameplan.

Spaghetti Western Dabble: I remember hearing nothing but bad things about the Alex Cox film Straight to Hell, which I never saw. But I cherished the oddball EP A Town Called Big Nothing that spun off its soundtrack, released under the artist name the MacManus Gang. It comprised basically two songs, "Big Nothing" and "Return to Big Nothing," only the former of which can be found online. It is inarguably a second-rate Morricone knockoff at best, but I kind of love it; the spoken word parts are by Sy Richardson.

Covered in Classical: If you're even remotely a Björk fan, do yourself a favor and track down the recordings of the concert she did with the Brodsky Quartet at London's Union Chapel in 1999. She performed a handful of her own songs as well as a few from the wonderful album the Brodskys had recently made with Costello, The Juliet Letters. For now, enjoy her rendition of the protest-too-much needy breakup song "Who Do You Think You Are."

Finger-Picking Good: I wish there were a record of Elvis's 2014 Carnegie Hall concert, an entirely solo set in which he reinterpreted a number of his songs in a gentle Travis-picking acoustic style, including "Every Day I Write the Book." This was only a few years after the underrated National Ransom, in which a number of songs had this light finger-picking style. One you shouldn't sleep on is the sweetly retro ragtime "A Slow Drag With Josephine," which is almost too cutesy and eager to please—listen for the whistle solo, or the word painting on "hesitation...waltz"—but which I've come to delight in.

A Little Bit Country: I can't credit Costello entirely with my getting into country music, but was his professed love for it one of the gateways? No doubt. This outtake from his middling Nashville covers record Almost Blue, a cover of Ray Price's "My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You," is just all tune, no frills (unless you count Tommy Millar's exquisite fiddle). It's hard to beat.

Pazz and Jop: "Shut Him Down," a positively thrilling new track released a few weeks ago but strangely not included on Hey Clockface, finds him backed by the Michael Leonhart Orchestra (who also back him on this album track), and it has what I think is a first for him: a guest rap break, in this case by JSWISS. Its headlong cool evokes the best of his album with the Roots, Wise Up Ghost. Elvis Costello: Still getting his kicks at age 66.