The Main Album

Following his second covers album, Kojak Variety, Elvis Costello set out to assemble a collection of songs he had written for other artists but never recorded himself – sort of a reverse covers album. As it turned out, that idea was only used as a launching pad – the resulting album, All This Useless Beauty, is a mixture of nine old and three new songs. Given its origins, it's surprising that the record holds together as well as it does. The main strength of All This Useless Beauty is the quality of the individual songs – each song can stand on its own as an individual entity, as the music is as sharp as the lyrics. Although the music is certainly eclectic, it's accessible, which wasn't the case with Mighty Like a Rose. Furthermore, the production is more textured and punchier than Mitchell Froom's botched job on Brutal Youth. All This Useless Beauty doesn't quite add up to a major statement, but the simple pleasures it offers makes it one of the more rewarding records of the latter part of Costello's career.

The Who retired following their 1982 farewell tour but like Frank Sinatra's frequent retreats from the stage, it was not a permanent goodbye. Seven years later, the band – Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and John Entwistle; that is, Keith Moon's replacement Kenny Jones wasn't invited back – embarked on a reunion tour, and ever since then the band was a going concern. Perhaps not really active – they did not tour on a regular basis, they did not record outside of a version of "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" for the 1991 Elton John and Bernie Taupin tribute album Two Rooms – but they were always around, playing tribute gigs and reviving old projects, such as a mid-'90s stab at Quadrophenia, before truly reuniting as an active touring band after the turn of the century.

Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specialising in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.