Elvis Presley - Elvis Now [Magenta]

Elvis Now finds the King in a reflective, wide-ranging mood, issued here as a limited 180-gram magenta pressing imported from Holland.

Despite the title, the 1972 album gathers recordings made between early 1969 and the summer of 1971, a period when Elvis was back on stage and back in the studio with a hunger for strong material. Rather than a themed project, it plays as a broad collection, crossing country, gospel, soul and soft pop with lavish arrangements that echo the scale of his Las Vegas shows.

Kris Kristofferson's Help Me Make It Through the Night opens the record with a slow, intimate glow, and the Beatles' Hey Jude gets a soulful, unhurried reading. Until It's Time for You to Go, the Buffy Sainte-Marie song that became the album's only single, shows off the warmth in his lower register, while I Was Born About Ten Thousand Years Ago closes things with a rollicking, foot-stomping finale.

It remains one of the more overlooked corners of his 1970s catalogue, a good pick for listeners who know the hits and want to hear Elvis as an interpreter of other people's songs. The magenta vinyl brings a suitably bold look, and the heavyweight pressing suits those big, warm arrangements.