It's just a rumour that was spread around town

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

07/08/83 : Punch The Clock - Elvis Costello And The Attractions

Our third visit with Mr Costello and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be much better received than the previous two - I like a lot of stuff he's done over the years but I also find a lot of it pretty tiresome, however from what I can gather from a sneak peak at the track listing, this has a far better quality/dross ratio.

And yeah, I really liked this - "Every Day I Write The Book", "Shipbuilding" and "Pills And Soap" are all very fine tracks indeed (I own the latter as a single) but the rest of the album didn't suffer a noticeable dip in quality.  I don't feel the need to say a lot more about it - if you know the classic Elvis Costello sound, this has it in spades.  If you don't, then check it out - what's the worst that can happen?  It is however, another album that neither of us own (although I believe I came close to buying it, but I think the album cover put me off) - we slip further to 8/21, which I can tell you is our new historic low of 38% because the slide will be (at least temporarily) halted next time around.

We're at the lofty heights of #3 in the charts this week - his second week out of a run of a 13 week run, after which it was never seen again.  This was the album's highest placing - bizarrely, it debuted in the previous week at #63, for which I suspect there was some reason that I'll never uncover.  Above it in the charts were The Beach Boys and Jacksons compilations - I'll be glad to see the back of them (it'll happen soon, but not soon enough).  The highest new entry this week was Street Sounds 5 (which features a bizarre combination of artists including Freeez, Aretha and Kenny Lynch) at #28 - the highest "proper" new entry was Cabaret Voltaire at #31.

Wikipedia has pretty much nothing on the album other than noting (twice) that NME declared it the album of 1983 and yes, I can't see it's had too much competition in that arena in the year from the albums we've seen so far.  I was surprised to see it got to #24 in the US - this was probably due to college radio which had a bizarrely strong impact on the sales of a select few UK acts.

"Customers also listened to" Joe Jackson, XTC and Squeeze - a definite particularly English thread running through all of this lot.  And whilst this isn't quite enough to tear me away from just listening to Elvis' "best of", I found it far preferable to the late 70s stuff that Rolling Stone loved so much (This Years Model and My Aim Is True) - it's well worth checking out if you don't know it.

31/07/83 - Very happy to be reminded this existed
14/08/83 - A somewhat underwhelming listen