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All This Useless Beauty (With Bonus Disc) | 
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| Artist: Elvis Costello
Label: Rhino / Wea
Category: Music
New (11) Used (6) from $12.43
Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 103431
Format: Original Recording Reissued, Original Recording Remastered
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 74284
UPC: 081227428426
EAN: 0081227428426
ASIN: B00005MLTT
Release Date: August 21, 2001
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| Tracks:
Disc 1
| • | The Other End Of The Telescope | | • | Little Atoms | | • | All This Useless Beauty | | • | Complicated Shadows | | • | Why Can't A Man Stand Alone? | | • | Distorted Angel | | • | Shallow Grave | | • | Poor Fractured Atlas | | • | Starting To Come To Me | | • | You Bowed Down | | • | It's Time | | • | I Want To Vanish |
Disc 2
| • | Almost Ideal Eyes | | • | My Dark Life (with Brian Eno) | | • | That Day Is Done (with The Fairfield Four) | | • | What Do I Do Now? | | • | The Bridge I Burned | | • | It's Time (demo) | | • | Complicated Shadows (demo) | | • | You Bowed Down | | • | Mistress And Maid (demo) | | • | Distorted Angel (demo) | | • | World's Greatest Optimist (demo) | | • | The Only Flame In Town (demo) | | • | The Comedians (demo) | | • | The Days Take Care Of Everything (demo) | | • | Hidden Shame (demo) | | • | Why Can't A Man Stand Alone (demo) | | • | Distorted Angel (Tricky Remix) |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Elvis Costello's final album for Warner Bros. might have been even more widely ignored had he and the Attractions not gone on tour to support it. The result led to a final split, but All This Useless Beauty still ended up doing little business. This reissue, part of Rhino's first wave of a Costello remaster/refurbishing campaign, provides an opportunity to hear mostly exemplary songwriting and assuredly masterful performances. Darkly observant and even witty, tracks like "The Other End of the Telescope" (a rewrite of a Costello-Aimee Mann collaboration), "Distorted Angel," and "Starting to Come to Me" could take their places on anyone's mix tape. (The snarling "Complicated Shadows," one of the few full-on rockers here, even made it as far as a Sopranos episode.) Costello overreaches on the title track, but its sophisticated tone works just about everywhere else it's tried. The bonus disc of demos and one-offs is necessarily a sonic hodgepodge, but it's a damn fine long-player on its own. Costello's liner notes are, as always, a must. --Rickey Wright
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 A mixed bag of stones with a few nuggets of gold June 22, 2007
I'm in the process of listening to EC's catalog beyond his first few familiar recordings and wanted to like ATUB more than I have the first couple of times through.
Much of the first disc simply strikes me as too esoteric. Other than the somewhat enjoyable title cut, disc one drags more than a bit until you hit the last four songs. Things pick up with 'Starting to Come to Me' and improve, song-by-song, through 'You Bowed Down', 'It's Time' and finally the sad, lovely 'I Want to Vanish'.
The bonus disc is inconsistent, but has some interesting tunes. 'Almost Ideal Eyes' sounds like a bizarre, cosmic fusion of Harry Connick Jr. and Santana. 'That Day is Done', with the Fairfield Four, is done in gospel style...an unique turn for Elvis. 'Mistress and Maid', with Paul McCartney, isn't especially tuneful, but delivers a gut-punch. Love the version here of 'The Only Flame in Town'. 'The Comedians', 'The Days Take Care of Everything' and 'Hidden Shame' (once recorded by Johnny Cash) also merit attention.
You can find something to enjoy on just about every Elvis Costello recording.....some more than others. Perhaps ATUB will grow on me.
 The best CD ever. By anyone. August 14, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Elvis has released a lot of great albums, and a certain amount of mundane tripe. This one is great. Twelve quite distinctive songs that complement each other beautifully and form one cohesive whole. Great variety in arrangement, but each song seems to belong right after the song before it. Elvis is the best lyricist in pop (?!) music, and these are his best lyrics - creative use of and plays on words, alternating with deep pondering of life and the universe. The melodies are superb. There are better artists than Elvis, but there are no better albums than All This Useless Beauty.
Best October 23, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Best Costello recording of all (except for maybe Armed Forces)...great variety, all the songs are good, no hoaky stuff, serious compositions....a treat for listeners and musicians alike....highly recommended!
 Quite good August 25, 2004
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an excellent later period Elvis record. Worth buying for the first 2 tracks alone.
I'm as Certain As a Lost Dog Pondering a Sign Post November 17, 2003
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This album is the bridge between Elvis and Burt Bacharach. It's easy to listen the main disc's "I Want To Vanish," "Why Can't A Man Stand Alone" and the title track and imagine them with the kind of lush arrangements that Bacharach would favor for the "Painted From Memory" album. But standing alone, "All This Useless Beauty" contains some of the finest of the Attractions' later day performances. Their live work on "Complicated Shadows" proves that they remained one of the best natural rock machines to ever call themselves a band. As usual, though, the center of all this remains Elvis' wordplay. "All This Useless Beauty" started with EC's desire to produce a double disc that would encompass several of the songs he had either recorded with or for other people, and, meeting with the usual record company indifference, evolved into something completely different. You do get some of those songs that became well known for others (Til Tuesday for "The Other End Of The Telescope," Roger McGuinn for "You Bowed Down") but also brought to life a matured and wizened lyrical perspective. To wit: "Poor Fractured Atlas" always sounded like Hemmingway with a bout of depression. The bonus disc is almost as good as the original album. (It helps to keep in mind that "All This Useless Beauty" started life as a two disc concept.) While the version of "That Day Is Done" won't make me forget Paul McCartney's from "Flowers In The Dirt," it will probably hit home with followers of "Oh Brother Where Art Thou." However, the haunting demo of "The Comedians" eventually became the version Roy Orbison chose to record, and it is easy to see why. Johnny Cash chose "Hidden Shame" (and from "King Of America," "The Big Light"). There's an early version of Aimee Mann's "World's Great Optimist" three years before her version appeared. Like Bacharach, the songs on both the main disc and the bonus demos prove that Elvis could sit down and write a song with a target singer in mind and cast it well. "All This Useless Beauty" may have been underrated on its original 1996 debut, but this recasting of it by the great folks at Rhino make at all the more worth discovering, be it for the first or second time.
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