Baltimore Sun, June 2, 2009

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Secret, Profane & Sugarcane

Elvis Costello

Randy Lewis

3-star reviews3-star reviews3-star reviews

Elvis Costello has never been one to shrink from a challenge, and on his new album, he has taken on a big one, a song cycle of sorts incorporating themes that wind like the muddy Mississippi through the cultural legacy of the American South and the tragic secrets and varied stripes of love — obsessive, unrequited and misfired. Some songs can be as straightforward as classic country.

With country queen Loretta Lynn, Costello wrote "I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came," a dark scenario of a faithless man losing his grip on the woman he sinned for. Others are as art-song sophisticated as "She Was No Good," inspired by 19th-century European singing star Jenny Lind's tour of the U.S. Mystery abounds in oblique stories such as "Hidden Shame." "Red Cotton" is powerful, a dramatic example of the price of human greed.

The highlights are "Sulphur to Sugarcane," the kind of bawdy blues Ma Rainey or Bessie Smith would have loved, and "The Crooked Line" that Costello describes as "the only song I've ever written about fidelity that is without irony."

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The Baltimore Sun, June 2, 2009


Randy Lewis reviews Secret, Profane & Sugarcane.


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