Review of concert at Supper Club, NY on 1996-05-22
NY Times 1996-05-25


May 25, 1996

Rock Review: Costello's Odyssey to Points of
View He Once Observed

By NEIL STRAUSS

NEW YORK -- At the second of two concerts Wednesday night at the Supper Club,
Elvis Costello structured his performance as meticulously as he writes his
songs. He opened his two-and-a-half hour set with a song that promised
"showtime is almost here" ("King Horse") and ended demanding "give me a rest"
in "I Want to Vanish." When he interrupted "Little Atoms" to tell a story
about an encounter with a hostile interviewer, he resumed the song with the
lyric in which he wishes damnation on those who don't like his music.

The concert, as usual, was also a lesson in songwriting, with Costello
demonstrating how his classic pop influences trickle into his edgy, brainy
songs.

In "Talking in the Dark," he acknowledged where he borrowed the song's guitar
line by breaking into the Kinks' "Dead End Street"; in "New Amsterdam" he
segued into the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" without changing
the melody. "I come from a long line of Irish-descended song thieves," he
joked during the show.

The music at the Supper Club was spare, with Costello's adenoidal singing and
light guitar strumming accompanied only by Steve Nieve, an original member of
Costello's former backup band, the Attractions, who ornamented the songs with
piano coloratura.

Costello seemed to enjoy the freedom that the simply staged show allowed,
performing three generous encores, singing several unreleased songs
(including "God Give Me Strength," which he wrote with Burt Bacharach), and
cracking jokes.

He did an uncanny impression of Elvis Presley singing Bruce Springsteen and
Blondie songs, and, during "God's Comic," recounted a dream in which the
Heavenly Father asked him if Alanis Morissette and Dave Grohl (of the Foo
Fighters) were the same person.

On the new "All This Useless Beauty" (Warner Brothers), his best album in a
decade, Costello opens with a song in which he walks out on a lover, telling
her that she can find him at "the other end of the telescope."

Costello spent the beginning of his 20-year career at the eyepiece of the
telescope, jealously observing an ex-lover in "Alison" and spying on a date
spent in front of a television screen in "Watching the Detectives" (both of
which he performed in stripped-down versions on Wednesday).

On recent albums, however, Costello has switched perspectives, singing from
the viewpoint of the characters he once observed. This is especially true of
the songs on "All This Useless Beauty," most of which Costello wrote for
other performers (including Roger McGuinn, Aimee Mann and June Tabor).

When performing songs from the album, including "Why Can't a Man Stand
Alone?," "All This Useless Beauty" and "Poor Fractured Atlas," Costello
sympathized with the opposite sex, complaining about men who were ugly,
obnoxiously macho or sex-obsessed.

In a new song he described as a lesser version of Madonna's "Papa Don't
Preach," Costello sang about a single woman preparing to have a baby she
knows she can't take care of.

Most great artists create from experience, and Costello is no exception. He
is inspired by the shared experiences of pop songs and Hollywood films, even
when he is being introspective or observing those around him.

The music becomes original when he filters it through his own detached
sensibility, that of an astute outsider who holds the pieces to life's puzzle
but knows that they are not supposed to fit together.