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| Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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North
Elvis Costello
Richard L. Eldredge
Grade: B
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The singer-songwriter has built a career on fusing myriad musical genres with his stinging insights into the human condition. For longtime fans, the quiet song cycle that makes up North will be jarring. Costello is working without a net here. Not only is he wearing his heart on his sleeve, but the close-up is sometimes so intense you can sense the blood circulating inside the left ventricle. Gone is any trace of Costello's trademark glibness. Blame or credit his new fiancée, jazz chanteuse Diana Krall, who is the quite obvious inspiration behind North. Like Joni Mitchell's 2000 album, Both Sides Now, North tracks the course of a relationship. Unlike Sides, which documented a relationship from its giddy first kiss to its disintegration, Costello starts with the unraveling (perhaps his 2002 split with wife Cait O'Riordan) via "You Left Me in the Dark" and by album's end he triumphantly sings "I'm in the Mood Again." Musically, the tunes' frameworks are spare with just Steve Nieve on piano and periodic splashes of saxophone, strings and fluegelhorn. Fans who appreciated Costello's collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet and Burt Bacharach will find much to like here.
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