Q, 1995-04-01
Review of Kojak Variety


While covers albums are never "eagerly awaited", they do offer some kind of
litmus test on established artists. Can a devoutly self-expressive
singer-writer doff the ego, don someone else's stories and emotions, and
portray them with conviction?

Well, Elvis Costello's entry, recorded over a fortnight in Barbados in 1991,
has its unfathomable moments when vain thoughts of art may have taken over.
For instance, a stomping version of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' Strange reaches
for the guitar break and suddenly it all goes mad for a bit. It's Marc
Ribot, apparently, and it's 100 percent dog-howling out of tune. Exactly
the same thing happens later on a Jesse Winchester boogie called Payday:
total wonkiness. Challenging, certainly.

But these peculiarities aside, Kojak Variety proves Costello's power as a
performer of anything that takes his fancy. While there's nothing wrong with
the way he roars through Bama Lama Bama Boo or James Carr's Pouring Water On
A Drowning Man, his strength in depth emerges when he's showing just how
many ways there are to take it dead slow. He brings a fervor of regret to
Dylan's I Threw It All Away; he's sly and slurry with the jazz cynicism of
Mose Allison's Everybody's Crying Mercy; he's hard and calculating on
Running Out Of Fools, a little known song Jerry Ragavoy wrote for Aretha
Franklin ("Have yourself a dime's worth of talking / Then I'm gonna hang up
on you"). perhaps most appealing and least Elvis-like are the bedroom eyes
behind the specs for The Very Thought Of You as he leans on the long,
languorous "o" sounds of "You'll never know how slow the moments go till I'm
near to you".

There are inconsistencies, on top of plain eccentricities. Costello snoozes
through Willie Dixon's swinging shuffle, Hidden Chorus. conversely, despite
his energetic performances, the reasons why he chose Little Willie John's
routine R&B gallop, Leave My Kitten Alone, and a Supremes obscurity, Remove
This Doubt, remain inscrutable.

All the same, there are signs here that, should he find himself at 60, all
fueling angers spent, Costello could be the man to mount the bar stool on a
smoky club stage set and sing the great songs of the last 40 years the way
Sinatra might have if he'd been born to the rock'n'roll generation.