***1/2 Elvis Costello

EXTREME HONEY: THE VERY BEST OF THE WARNER BROS. YEARS

(Warner Bros.)

This very eclectic selection from a very eclectic period in Costello's career may well be the very best. "Hurry Down Doomsday," for example, one of his more effective late-period high-dudgeon rockers, is enough to send one back to check whether the prevailing murk of Mighty Like a Rose hasn't perhaps been mis-remembered (it hasn't). And the combination of doleful vocal and tart string quartet on "The Birds Will Still Be Singing" encourages one to give The Juliet Letters another go, hoping this time that the gap between reach and grasp will not seem so dispiriting (it does).

For the rest, most of the cuts here are felicitous selections from two outstanding albums, Brutal Youth and All This Useless Beauty, and from the scattershot Spike. Costello's lyrics are as fussy as ever (somewhat less so on his two collaborations here with Paul McCartney, and on the ballads where his imagery machine is allowed to idle) and his best songs remain the ones whose hooky directness compensates for your being not quite sure what the hell he's going on about (e.g., "Sulky Girl" and "Kinder Murder"). Two previously unreleased cuts are unremarkable, but the overall effect is to make Costello's last eight years appear more gratifyingly focused than they seemed at the time.

-- Richard C. Walls