Elvis Costello on Turning ‘Armed Forces’ Into 2020’s Coolest Boxed Set
Very few music boxed sets aspire beyond being gussied up digital repositories to becoming actual physical pieces of pop art. But opening up the new vinyl set from Elvis Costello, “The Complete Armed Forces,” feels like getting several Christmas mornings all at once, with a suitable-for-fondling nine records, seven paperbacks and various other ephemera intended to bring back the color explosions of 1979 as well as invoke other visual styles from the pulp-fiction ‘50s to the present. At the center of the “super-deluxe” set, enveloped in elaborate, Barney Bubbles-designed origami packaging, is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s fairly undisputed masterpieces, “Armed Forces,” a semi-concept record that reinvented Costello’s style three albums into his career and made “emotional fascism” sound like great, brow-furrowed fun.
But how many artists would have the chutzpah, more than 40 years into a career, to release a new studio album almost simultaneously with an elaborate shrine
