Review of concert from 2002-09-09: Manchester, Carling Apollo
- with Imposters
Manchester Online, 2002-09-12
Elvis Costello @ Apollo
TWENTY-FIVE years since his first hit and with a raft of new London
bands mining the tense, late-70s new wave scene from which he originally
emerged, for Elvis Costello the time for one last hurrah is now.
Earnest and full of pious pretension, Costello has spent the last decade
collaborating with string quartets, film directors and past-sell-by-date
sixties pop legends, while rarely troubling chart compilers.
Still, admirers have hung on his lyrical dexterity and queer yelping
yodel as evidence that he is `a great British songwriter'.
Returning to basics with a three-piece pub-band set-up, this career
retrospective proves just how over-rated Costello is as both a performer
and writer. His four or five inspired moments - Oliver's Army, Watching
The Detectives, I Don't Want To Go To Chelsea, Good Year For The Roses
and Shipbuilding - are counter-balanced by whatever else fills up the
rest of his 20-odd dusty old albums.
Despite his best efforts to engage the audience through embarrassingly
lacklustre singalongs and histrionic guitar antics, Costello and the
crowd seem to know we are all just playing for time between his most
famous songs.
When he starts to play tracks from his new album, When I Was Cruel,
it is to a handful of hesitant applause. Upbeat or downbeat, the new
songs are either a pale pastiche of Costello as a kid or melody-free
experiments in trying to stay relevant. Throughout, Costello adopts
his familiar stance - shoulders hunched, shrugging at his guitar without
moving his feet. To his credit, the great pop that he has at his disposal
he does not waste. Detectives sprawls out majestically over its sleazy
reggae riff and Costello still puts his poignant all into Shipbuilding.
The encore finally provokes a lusty audience rush to the foot of the
stage but, once Oliver's Army is speedily dispensed, many are heading
for the door, regardless that Costello has a few more songs left to
play. ]
© Copyright 2002 GMG Regional Digital.