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