DALLAS — If Elvis Costello hadn't told us he'd been sick in bed all day, we never would have known.
Animated, funny, brimming with stories and tearing into songs that spanned his entire catalogue, Costello was thoroughly personable and impressive Tuesday night at the Bronco Bowl.
Guys like Costello (and Springsteen, Dylan and Van Morrison) who have such a massive number of great songs at their disposal are always going to be the topic of much second-guessing: Why'd he do this old chestnut and not that one, why'd he dust off a couple tunes from this CD and not several others?
Costello did the right thing Tuesday night by just sort of meandering through his back pages: This was not an all-rarities show, or a hits-fest, but rather a balance between both as well as a nice display of several of the better songs from his most recent CD, All This Useless Beauty.
Hitting the stage at 9 p.m. with "Man Out of Time" and "Waiting For the End of the World," Costello and the Attractions (keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas, drummer Pete Thomas) were in vibrant form, churning through the soul of the new "Why Can't A Man Stand Alone?," some R&B-flavored jamming on "13 Steps Lead Down" and taking care of business with brisk efficiency.
Costello sounds at home with all his material, and able to either jump from one era to the other or cannily tie two widely different periods of his career together. A great example of the latter was a steaming, slinky medley of the new "Distorted Angel" and the ancient "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea" — which was capped with, of all things, a snippet of the Isley Brothers' "That Lady."
But on a night of wonderful music, the best moments of all came during a mid-evening acoustic set that included only Costello's guitar and Nieve's keyboards. This was classic Costello, one part comedian (as on a long story about the Holy Trinity and the American Elvis in the middle of a knockout "God's Comic") and one part troubador he punched out the words to "Oliver's Army" and strummed through "Veronica" with equal facility, and if it wasn't evident before, it was now: We were watching a master at work.
Young English pop act Sleeper opened the evening with a 40-minute set drawn mainly from the band's second and most recent CD, The It Girl. Frontwoman Louise Wener sang well, and the band (which now includes a keyboardist and an extra guitarist) sounded fine, but Wener seemed a bit at a loss when she didn't have a guitar on. All in all this is a band that should be experienced in a small club.
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