Review of concert at Perth Concert Hall, Australia on 1999-02-13
Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve
- Grau, Michael" <M.Grau@vgo.wa.gov.au>

Elvis Costello and Steve Nieve

Perth Concert Hall
13th February 1999

A summer Saturday brought a hat-less, more classical Elvis Costello to a Perth Concert Hall more familiar with clapping than the raucous cheering which briefly held up proceedings on stage. The balding Costello apologised for his lateness as if we, the audience, had been sitting in the dark for the two weeks since his cancelled show. Two weeks had given the audience enough time to realise the fragility of artists and the seemingly disposable nature of a Perth circuit, two weeks with which to cash in tickets only to buy them back again, two weeks for Costello's voice to recover and sour without strain into Why Can't A Man Stand Alone.

Steve Nieve must take some credit for Costello's ease and poise. Nieve supplied not just the underlying beats and melodies but the points of return and departure for a Costello who, like us, stepped back to listen to Nieve. The lighting assistant discovered Costello at the side of the stage only for Costello to point him back to the white keys where Nieve's ivory fingers sketched a most remarkable arrangement of full orchestra into piano, solo.

The audience hovered around 35 years and the music reflected on a good deal of that time between the two artists. As they have moved into and out of music making together, this tour seemed to create more than a retrospective, almost always a reworking which evoked originals and personalised them through the arrangements. So too do we see a reworking of Costello himself during this time as his move into and out of a classical singing style was displayed in these tracks spanning decades of music making. At times Costello's palm would move up and down in front of his chest and like a choral conductor it would hit its mark and fall. We saw more of this as Costello sang his more recent works and Nieve's long nose took less heat from the spotlight as his head came closer to the keyboard. Nieve, too, we see is in parallel with Costello's move to move complex lines.

The most enjoyable This House Is Empty Now from the recent Painted From Memory collaboration between Bacharach and Costello gave way to other looks into the past. Veronica and Alison both demonstrated Nieve and Costello's eagerness to relate to the past in new ways as they barely paused between the re-arrangements. There was no time for strain but the duo lifted the dynamics with the introduction of an electric archtop guitar for Watching the Detectives before a Costello stepped from behind the microphone to sing Couldn't Call it Unexpected #4 while the front row sat with his feet in their mouths. When he stopped and removed his feet the audience could no longer hold back their enthusiasm, the lights just had to come on to get rid of us.

Michael Grau