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Kent Benjamin
This Year's Model
Rhino (R2-78354)
Blood And Chocolate
(R2-78390)
Brutal Youth
Rhino (R2-78355)
Rhino continues to overhaul the Elvis Costello back catalog by reissuing three of the finest albums he released with The Attractions as his backing band.
One would have thought the brilliant Rykodisc reissues from several years back were the definitive word, but with Costello's direct involvement and anecdotal personal liner notes added, these are in fact an improvement. First off, it must be noted that as Rhino likes to send out CD-Rs with no art and unremastered sound, we can't really say much about how much better they are sonically or in terms of packaging. If the first round of reissues hold true, the booklets are very different, a bit longer and contain some new photos while losing some cool stuff on the Ryko versions, and the sound is a bit better as technology has improved. But, this doesn't really constitute an overwhelming reason to repurchase them.
To entice fans to buy them, then, they've expanded each album to a low-priced double disc so that it includes every track on the Ryko reissues, with a few additional tracks added (FYI in the case of This Year's Model , the two discs combined are only about 30 seconds too long for a single disc).
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