Cape Cod Times
July 06, 2006 Elvis Costello king at the Tent
By BILL O’NEILL STAFF WRITER HYANNIS – If you’re a fan of rock ’n’ roll and you missed Elvis Costello’s sold-out show last night at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, tape a piece of paper that says “kick me” on your backside.
Hate to say it, pal, but you missed the type of show that comes this way only once every few years. Maybe once every 10 years. The last time I saw a Melody Tent show this good was when David Byrne played in 1997. That show only sold about half the seats in the Tent, so there were even more “kick me” signs needed back then.
Costello is rock’s greatest chameleon, a genre-jumper who, depending on your view, is either clever and courageous or shallow and short-focused. The evidence last night was firmly in favor of the former. The nasal-voiced Brit will never go down as one of rock’s smoothest singers, but he knows how to make the most of what he has. He can convincingly sound like a better-than-average country crooner (“Poisoned Rose”), soul belter (“Nearer to You”) and rock screamer (“Pump It Up”).
Touring with his backing band, the Imposters (two of the players were part of his original group, the Attractions), legendary New Orleans pianist Allen Toussaint, the Crescent City Horns and guitarist Anthony Brown, Costello focused on songs from his excellent new album with Toussaint, “The River in Reverse,” but included plenty of old hits.
Toussaint wrote new arrangements for a batch of Costello classics, giving them a New Orleans R&B flavor. The songs were transformed: “I Don’t Want to Go to Chelsea” is now more plea than protest, while “Alison” is more elegaic than wistful.
Costello and the Impostors hit the stage shortly after 8 p.m., were joined after one song by Toussaint and the other musicians, and kept playing until just before the 10:30 curfew. No intermission, no encore. You could call it Springsteenian, except there was little time lost to chatter. The prolific Costello did joke at one point that he’s written 350,000 songs, “including 17 of them this afternoon.”
On “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?” and “Clown Strike,” Costello demonstrated he deserves almost as much praise for his guitar work as for his songwriting.
The rollicking “Bedlam” and the even rowdier “Clubland” showed the merger of Costello’s rock band and the New Orleans players was a total success. Two songs were stolen by trombonist Sam Williams, who delivered elephantine solos on “Watching the Detectives” and “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?”
No longer the skinny geek pictured on the cover of his 1977 debut, “My Aim Is True,” Costello looks like a prosperous, or at the very least, a well-fed geek. Oozing sweat in his black suit, he might have been visiting from rock ’n’ roll hell, while Toussaint stayed calm, cool and dignified as he was plying his Steinway to heaven.
If Toussaint is not as compelling a vocal performer as Costello, he certainly sings with a grace that’s as moving as it is entertaining. Costello first worked with Toussaint in 1983, when they collaborated on a remake of Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice.” Their new album came about when they saw each other last fall during some benefits for victims of Hurricane Katrina – Toussaint’s home was badly damaged by the storm.
The songs on “The River in Reverse” address suffering and rebirth, none more powerfully than the Toussaint-penned “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?” Key lines: “What happened to the Liberty Bell I heard so much about? / It didn’t ding dong / It must have dinged wrong / It didn’t ding long.”
Unsettling stuff for the day after Independence Day.
Bill O’Neill can be reached at boneill@capecodonline.com.
