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Seven years after he first began to make records, Elvis Costello is still in brilliant form: and last week in Newcastle, he blew the City Hall away.
He began the concert with a disparaging reference to the Top of the Pops show he had just left in the dressing room, showing that the Costello bitterness most noticeable in old songs like "Red Shoes" ("I used to be disgusted / now I try to be amused") had not disappeared. Tonight he performed his songs with the snarling grit which made him famous: from "Mystery Dance" on the first album, to "Home Truth" on the new album ("turn on the TV / and the world comes crashing in"), to the new single, "I Hope You're Happy Now" — directed tonight at George Michael — he began at times to look more like a bouncer than a performer.
The going was not easy, however. The civilised seating at City Hall goaded Elvis into frequently challenging people to stand on their seats to get dancing, and keyboard maestro Steve Nieve's organ was often seen to be not functioning properly.
These factors contributed to a slightly low ebb during the first part of the performance; but "Oliver's Army" changed all that. "If you're out of luck or out of work," Costello sang, in the same vein as his later dedication of "Shipbuilding" (a song about the Falklands) to the boys from Cammell Laird in jail.
The high point of the evening was Elvis' appearance after the first of five encores to perform some songs unaccompanied by the Attractions. These included a new song in which a stirring vision of life "outside the nursery door" was offered to a child in a cradle (a cover version of Richard Thompson's "End Of The Rainbow"); another song, called "Peace In Our Time" was said to have produced a few cupfuls of American tears on Costello's last tour. Tonight everyone understood why.
Soon the Attractions were back on for a rousing climax to a two-and-a-half hour set comprising more than forty songs. The last fifteen minutes included two love songs, one from each end of his career: the favourites "Alison" and "Everyday I Write The Book." Written with seven years between them, they both reflect the excellence that was, and fortunately still is, Elvis Costello.
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