Review of Painted From Memory
SonicNet, 1998-10-07
- Ben Auburn
2/5 stars

Painted from Memory, Elvis Costello (Mercury)
Sometimes It's Better To Forget ...

It's now hip to be square, and music that was once heard only in elevators and
on easy listening stations is leaking into pop culture once again.
By Ben Auburn

This is what Pete Townshend was thinking when he wrote "Hope I die before I get
old." Though Elvis Costello and the Attractions were playing Burt Bacharach
songs in their live sets as early as 1977, they were filtered through their
unique sensibility -- and, probably, at least partly played to shock complacent
new-wave audiences. No such luck on Painted from Memory, Costello's new
collaboration with Bacharach and the former Angry Young Punk's first record for
his unusual deal with PolyGram, which will put his pop albums out on Mercury
and his jazz and classical experiments on other subsidiaries.

Bacharach's been enjoying much-noted renaissance of late, what with an
appearance in "Austin Powers," celebrity endorsements from the likes of Noel
Gallagher, a cable special of more notables singing famous selections from his
oeuvre. It's hip to dig Bacharach. You could hum "Raindrops Keep Falling on My
Head" in a trendy bar in Soho and not get kicked out. It's a natural offshoot
of the lounge-music craze of a couple years ago, the scene that's split into
the swingers and the cheeseballs -- Cherry Poppin' Daddies on one side, Burt
Bacharach and the High Llamas on the other.

Huey Lewis was actually about 10 years off. It's now hip to be square, and
music that was once heard only in elevators and on easy-listening stations is
leaking into pop culture once again. Maybe it's natural. The original Hüsker Dü
fans are now in their 30s, after all. Could we finally be slowing down? It
could all be some kind of genetic failing -- we're fated to want to listen to
flugelhorns and oboe lines, but since we grew up being on the edge, we try our
best to continue to position ourselves there, no matter what.

If you thought a Costello/Bacharach collaboration might mean Attractions numbers
with the occasional sweetened bridge or sneaky chord change, you'll be sorely
disappointed. Most of Painted from Memory sounds like vintage Bacharach --
albeit with Costello's trademark razor-sharp lyrical sense. There's almost
nothing musical on this record that doesn't induce a cringe -- once the
clarinets and female backup-singers kick in, you basically want to kill
yourself.

Maybe it's immature to fail to appreciate the complex musical genius of Burt
Bacharach, but if this is growing old gracefully, count me out. His
arrangements may suggest a real mastery of tone, structure, counterpoint, but
they're still unbearably saccharine -- and they haven't changed in 30 years.
Where Costello has tried on many costumes -- maybe not always with complete
success -- Bacharach has mined the same basic territory his whole career.

Given that, all of the songs on Painted from Memory sound a little familiar,
like you may have heard them in an airport bar before. There are musical hints
of Costello here and there, like on album-opener "In the Darkest Place" or the
title song, but it's Bacharach whose style defines the album. [In an article
for Details, Costello says that several of the songs were already finished
Bacharach-compositions to which he added lyrics, while others were true
collaborations.]

Lyrically, Costello is, as always, no slouch. It's an album of lost love songs,
a genre for which Costello's affinity seems endless. "The Long Division" gets
off a nice, bent chorus: "And every night you ask yourself/ 'What am I to
do?'/  Can it be so hard to calculate?/ If three goes into two/ There's nothing
left over." In the spirit of his metaphoric tour de forces like "Every Day I
Write the Book" or "The Only Flame In Town" comes "The Sweetest Punch," which
takes the familiar trope of breakup-as-fight and pushes it as far as it can go:
"You only saw red/ After I said 'How can we continue?'/ Hidden from your view
in the blue corner/ That I painted myself into/ Then we started to fight and it
changed everything/ 'Here's your ring.' "

The songs, though, deflate most of the impact of Costello's devastating wit.
I'll eagerly await the next Elvis Costello album. And though it'll arrive with
more fanfare than previous efforts, I'll do my best to ignore the next Burt
Bacharach one. Being a Costello fan means, almost by definition, avoiding
narrow-mindedness -- he's refused to settle for any one style or tactic to make
the music he wants. But if hating Painted from Memory is a failure, then I'll
wear it proudly.
[Wed., October 7, 12:00 AM EDT]