|
Elvis Costello has written a lot of great songs since 1977, but one of his very best ingeniously likens a disloyal lover to a spy unfaithful to any nation — "Man Out of Time." He skipped that one at the Warner Theatre last night, but more than ever, it feels like his unofficial theme song as an artist unfaithful to any genre or era. While continuing to record in a variety of idioms and at a dizzying pace, he seems, at 55, most concerned with the eternal present of live performance. New albums still surface here and there, but usually with little fanfare, almost as an afterthought. (Anyone remember Momofuku?)
His two-hour set with The Sugarcanes at the Warner found him and his six cohorts — dobro ace Jerry Douglas, fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Dennis Crouch, accordionist Jeff Taylor, mandolin player /singer Mike Compton, and backing singer/rhythm guitarist Jim Lauderdale — firmly in the moment, while looking both forward (they played a half-dozen as-yet-unreleased new songs) and back (any one of which you could have mistook for a pre-rock 'n' roll folk, country, or jazz standard).
Otherwise, the set was a characteristically eclectic mix of album cuts excavated from the depths of Elvis's catalogue ("New Amsterdam," "Blame It on Cain," "The River in Reverse"); covers both familiar to Elvis's repertoire (the opening "Mystery Train," "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down," "Friend of the Devil") and un- (Fats Domino's "Before I Grow Too Old," Keith Richards's "Happy"), and oh yeah, a few of Elvis's hits, recast to capitalize on this remarkable band.
|
