Rank Elvis' 21st Century Albums

[BlueChair]

Rank Elvis' albums from 2000-2008! It'd be interesting to see where Momofuku falls on peoples' lists. Obviously as time goes by these lists can change, so answer how you feel right now!

1. Momofuku
2. The River In Reverse
3. The Delivery Man
4. When I Was Cruel
5. North
6. For The Stars
7. Cruel Smile

And believe it or not I still haven't heard Il Sogno or My Flame Burns Blue, so I'm not including those in my list. I'll get there.

[the_platypus]

My honest opinion RIGHT NOW, and I realize this will change when the Momofuku buzz wears off a little,

1. Momofuku
2. My Flame Burns Blue
3. North
4. The Delivery Man
5. When I Was Cruel
6. River in Reverse


I like "For the Stars" just fine, but I wouldn't really rank it as an EC album. And I don't own either "Il Sogno" or "Cruel Smile".

[DeathWearsABigHat]

1. The River In Reverse
2. When I Was Cruel
3. Momofuku
4. North
5. For The Stars
6. Cruel Smile
7. The Delivery Man
8. My Flame Burns Blue

[pophead2k]

1. Momofuku
2. The River in Reverse
3. When I Was Cruel
4. The Delivery man
5. North
6. My Flame Burns Blue
7. Piano Jazz
8. Cruel Smile
9. For the Stars

I think Momofuku ranks best for me because its a lean album and there are so many references to different periods and sounds. Love the production too. RIR because it has very deep personal meaning for me. When I Was Cruel probably has some of my favorite songs, but too many songs that I don't care much for. Same for Delivery Man. Neither of those two are as consistent for me.

[krm]

My list...

1. The Delivery man
2. North
3. Momofuku
4. The River in Reverse
5. When I Was Cruel

6. My Flame Burns Blue
6. Piano Jazz
6. Cruel Smile
9. For the Stars
9. Il sogno

Momofuku has to grow a bit (just got it yesterday, through the www...)
The three no. 6 , I managed to listen through a couple a times, but
For the Stars and Il Sogno....not!

[migdd]

1.) Delivery Man
2.) Momofuku
3.) River in Reverse
4.) North
5.) WIWC

Still the Delivery Man for me. I guess I'm one of the few that rank it up there with King of America, still holding a special place for me after all this time. Time will tell if Momofuku takes the lead. I have the other albums but won't rank them. The above five albums are the major ones containing new material. Il Sogno is just so different an animal to compare to the pop albums. The others are fine in their own right (to a greater or lesser degree, depending on your preferences) but are really hard to compare with an album of all-new material. Cruel Smile is really just a glorified bonus disc (the live stuff is interesting but at that point the Imposters had only begun to catch fire) released 20 years too early.

Wonder what the rest of the decade holds?

[Fishfinger king]

1 Momofuku
2 When I Was Cruel
3 River in Reverse
4 The Delivery Man
5 My Flame Burns Blue
6 Cruel Smile
7 Piano Jazz
8 North
9 Il Sogno
10 For The Stars

In my mind Momofuku is streets ahead of the rest. Otherwise it's unfortunately the weakest link as a decade.
Never understood why North is so admired.

[Miclewis]

1. The Delivery Man
2. When I Was Cruel
3. North
4. The River In Reverse
5. My Flame Burns Blue
6. Momofuku
7. Piano Jazz
8. Il Sogno
9. Cruel Smile

I'm sorry, but with exception of two great songs (Song With Rose and Pardon Me Madam), Momofuku just does not hold up next to his other recent albums, especially The Delivery Man.

[alexv]

1. North/MMF--ballads/r&r. A tie.
2. TDM
3. Flame
4. RIR

Big Drop:

5. WIWC
6. CS
7. Sogno

[invisible Pole]

1. Momofuku
2. When I Was Cruel
3. North
4. River In Reverse
5. The Delivery Man
6. Piano Jazz
7. For The Stars / Cruel Smile / My Flame Burns Blue (tie)
8. Il Sogno

[burgundy breakfast]

1. When I Was Cruel
2. Momofuku
3. The Delivery Man
4. The River In Reverse
5. My Flame Burns Blue
6. Cruel Smile
7. North

[wardo68]

1 North
2 The Delivery Man
3 Momofuku
4 Piano Jazz
5 The River In Reverse
6 When I Was Cruel
7 My Flame Burns Blue
8 Cruel Smile
9 For The Stars
10 Il Sogno

And now the explanation:

Yes, I'm a big fan of North. Deal with it.
Momofuku may soon displace Delivery Man at #2. Stay tuned.
If you combine the best of the Cruel albums, you'd have your #4.
For The Stars shouldn't count at all, except that he's on the cover and got himself star billing.
I've only heard the Sogno Suite that came with MFBB, and that was just once.

[jmm]

1 The River in Reverse (especially if paired with Hot as a Pistol .. and thus adding Fortune Teller, Yes We Can Can, etc)
2 Momofuku (with a bullet)
3 North
4 The Delivery Man (w/ Futurama sessions bonus)
5 When I Was Cruel (w/ Cruel Smile as the bonus disk)
6 My Flame Burns Blue
7 Piano Jazz
8 Il Sogno
9 For The Stars

I can't treat the additional material as seperate albums but instead think of them as double CDs "rhino style". I'd swap TDM and WIWC without the Futurama additions.

It's not really fair to put the AT songbook up against any one EC album but that's what this is and why it's easily #1 to me

The diversity of what's hear is great in that I regulary listen to 1 to 7 depending on the mood of the day

[cwr]

1. The Delivery Man
2. Momofuku
3. The River In Reverse
4. TIE: North/When I Was Cruel
6. Il Sogno
8. My Flame Burns Blue
9. TIE: For The Stars/Cruel Smile

I was tempted to put Momofuku in the lead, but I held off-- it's too soon to tell, and the thrill of the "new album" can cause me to overstate things. So I was cautious and put in into a strong second place. (However, I will say this-- comparing my "favorite" tracks on TDM and MF, I prefer "Turpentine" to "Country Darkness." So, who knows? Maybe a year from now, I'll feel like Momofuku has risen to the top of the pack.)

TRIR is an album I have almost zero criticism of. I just think it's great.

WIWC and North tie for fourth place-- Different as they are, I like them both about the same. They both have different strengths and weaknesses-- WIWC is more energetic and varied, but NORTH has more heart and genuine feeling. WIWC is a little long, and a few of the tracks are sort of "brutalized" by the album's aggressive sound ("45" was a much stronger song in its acoustic version, as Costello had played it on The Tonight Show-- on the album, it has a lot less "feeling.") NORTH is a subtler record, and it's an album that I really have to be in the right "mood" in order to enjoy.

Il Sogno comes next, beating out My Flame Burns Blue simply because I am more likely to listen to it all the way through, whereas MFBB is a record I'm more likely to pick and choose tracks from.

And For The Stars and Cruel Smile tie for last place. It's almost unfair to include them in this kind of competition, as one is really another artist's record, and the other is essentially just the "bonus disc" for WIWC. Having said that, FTS may be a Von Otter record, but EC's hand is so heavy that it's much closer to being a Costello project than a Von Otter one. And while CS is definitely one of the most "fans only" releases of Costello's career, it contains enough notable tracks to make it worth including. Each of them has its charms, but the definitely can't compete with the other things he's put out in recent years. (jmm, I think your instinct is actually correct-- CS should just be counted as a "bonus disc" the way The Clarksdale and Futurama Sessions are connected to TDM.)

Of course, it's interesting to compare this period (adding in Painted From Memory) to the Warner Years, and The Columbia Era. Most people tend to prefer those first ten years, the "classic" period. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Warner era-- to me, it just feels like the most adventurous period, where the things he had begun exploring with Imperial Bedroom and King Of America really started to take off into the stratosphere.

Sad to say, the Universal Music Group Years probably do rank third. It almost makes me sad to consider that, because I've liked every single album he's put out during this time. It's not so much that there has been a real decline in quality, simply that Costello's unwillingness to repeat himself means that he's already burned through a lot of his options by this point. He's not going to attempt a follow-up to Get Happy!! at this point, and that's both good and bad. Good, because there's no chance of him recording a disappointing "sequel", but Bad because, well, honestly-- who wouldn't love to hear him make another album like that?? Who here wouldn't be absolutely delighted to hear that sound on a new batch of twenty songs?

[Who Shot Sam?]

1. The River in Reverse
2. Momofuku
3. North
4. The Delivery Man
5. When I Was Cruel
6. My Flame Burns Blue
7. Il Sogno
8. For The Stars
9. Cruel Smile

[so lacklustre]

WIWC
MF
TRIR
TDM
N

Don't count CS as an album, although I wouldn't be without it just for the fntastic live version of SG.

SL