Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Trust

As I’ve been saying, all my early Elvis vinyl, everything that happened before King of America, I bought after King of America. I didn’t know any of those albums before the mid-to-late ‘80s, other than knowing their singles from various collections (I didn’t get most of them on CD until the mid-90s). And as a result, I didn’t really get that into them as albums.

“Trust” was one exception. I believe I picked this up the same as all my other Elvis Costello vinyl, in the rush to clear out vinyl and make room for long-box CD displays. Unlike the other early albums, this one (from 1981) made a real impression on me once I bought it, and got considerable play, was transferred onto cassette, and was featured on mix tapes. His lyrics really step up on this album. The great wordplay of “You’ll Never Be a Man,” and “New Lace Sleeves” and “Big Sister’s Clothes” really slew me. But by far my favorite track was one featuring Glenn Tilbrook. I was a huge Squeeze fan — I am a huge Squeeze fan — and his vocals on “From A Whisper to A Scream” just slew me.

Unfortunately, all these late pressings of early Elvis records were bare bones affairs — no picture sleeves or lyric sheets or custom labels. If those were ever part of Elvis’s releases, they were gone by the time I got these LPs. So a lot of the things that cause great associations with records — the liner notes, the personnel credits, the weird little “thanks to’s” — none of those are here, sadly. Just the music. Because I had “Trust” on vinyl, I held off a long time on getting a CD version until the Rykodisc version came out in 1994, with a bunch of extended tracks including “Love for Sale” and “Gloomy Sunday.” Worth the wait.