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If you listen to Elvis Costello talking about it, his most recent outing is not a bluegrass record. But if you listen to the album, produced by T-Bone Burnett, you might think differently.
It’s not bluegrass simply because of the instrumentation – Dobro , fiddle, mandolin, accordion and double bass – or the band (full of marquee names) backing him up. The lush full-length is bluegrass because it feels like bluegrass – the luminous stories of harrowing sadness and the occasional feeling of unabashed joy.
Costello and his new band, the Sugarcanes (bluegrass stalwarts Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Mike Compton, Jeff Taylor and Dennis Crouch), will tour this summer, including a headlining stint at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival on June 19. That the singer-songwriter is drawn to this instrumentation makes sense. Some of his peers (including Robert Plant) have found financial and artistic success by cutting rootsy records.
Costello deserves both. This collection of old Costello favorites (“Complicated Shadows”), covers (“Changing Partners”), new collaborations (“I Felt the Chill”) and songs plucked from Costello’s opera in progress (“She Handed Me A Mirror”) is a tour de force regardless of the genre. Costello’s vocals (backed by Jim Lauderdale) spin a couple of ageless yarns that would fit in any decade, and the album is proof that there is plenty of artistic merit in repurposing of a musician’s back catalog.
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