Review of The Delivery Man and Il Sogno
Independent On Sunday, 2004-09-19
- Simmy Richman

( scanned from print edition)

Elvis Costello
The Delivery Man

LOST HIGHWAY

So we have to just accept there are two Costellos these days. One is the ‘crooner”; the other the uneasy-listening punk poet. And while we’re about to get new albums from both, only this will be a pleasure to review. Over the course of its 14 tracks (13 if you buy it in the US, where the suicide-bomber ballad ‘She’s Pulling Out the Pin” has been removed), we get the only Costello that ever mattered -before the ballet soundtracks and Bacharach comparisons (almost) ruined him. On the evidence of this, Elvis is alive and kicking against the pricks. And who’d want him any other way? II Sogno, anyone? Exactly.

Simmy Richman