Elvis Costello isn’t waiting for a nice round number to celebrate the album that started it all. My Aim Is True (49th Anniversary Edition) takes his landmark 1977 debut and expands it into a five-CD, 104-track account of how Declan MacManus became Elvis Costello, with 52 previously unreleased recordings filling in the story along the way.

The original album has been newly remastered from the 1977 analog master tapes, bringing fresh attention to a remarkably assured collection of songs that introduced Costello through “Welcome to the Working Week,” “Less Than Zero,” “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” “Alison” and “Waiting for the End of the World.” The first disc also includes “Watching the Detectives,” joining the song to the album as it appeared on the original U.S. release.

From there, the collection works backward and forward through Costello’s transformation. The Blue Print gathers acoustic recordings, bedroom tapes and demos from before the album, while The Stranger In The House follows his progression from Declan MacManus through his early recordings for Stiff Records and toward the identity that would soon become known around the world. Among the previously unreleased material is the early Hope & Anchor Studio recording of “I Turn Around.”

The fourth disc, Becoming The Attractions, captures another crucial transition as Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas enter the picture and Costello’s songs begin taking on the attack associated with the Attractions. The final disc, Covered In Clover, jumps ahead three decades to a unique 2007 performance in which Costello reunited with members of Clover, the American band that backed him on the original sessions, to perform My Aim Is True live.

Costello also tells the story himself through an extensive 72-page essay accompanied by unseen photographs, handwritten lyrics and entries from his 1976 diaries. Nick Lowe, John McFee, Gregg Geller, Bill Flanagan, Warren Zanes, Rosanne Cash, Peter Wolf and Jim James contribute additional perspectives, with recollections from Attractions members Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas.

Even the decision to celebrate the 49th anniversary instead of waiting another year feels appropriately Costello. He has said that the idea of a conventional 50th anniversary celebration struck him as “preposterous,” and the resulting collection avoids approaching My Aim Is True simply as an artifact from 1977. Instead, it reconstructs everything happening around it: the rejected songwriter, the demos and bedroom recordings, the hurried Pathway Studios sessions with producer Nick Lowe and Clover, and the emergence of one of the most distinctive songwriters of his generation.