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My Flame Burns Blue
Elvis Costello
Rob Patterson
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Elvis Costello's two-CD My Flame Burns Blue arrives on the esteemed Deutsche Grammophon classical label. The first disc contains a live concert featuring Costello backed by the Metropole Orkest. The intimations of music for the ages are more than clear.
There are some truly masterful moments on My Flame Burns Blue — delectable mood pieces like "Favorite Hour," "Upon a Veil of Midnight Blue" and "Can You Be True?" — but the album's a mixed affair that ranges from the sublime to the strained to the painfully overwrought. Problems crop up at the outset, on "Hora Decubitis," where Costello's singing almost trips on his wordiness and the busy beehive of an arrangement overstates the melodic case like musical logorrhea (though the middle section of T-Bone Walker-ish big-band blues suggests a realm where Costello's yen for musical richness could soar). And too often, he throws the kitchen sink into the accompaniment (and sometimes a pink flamingo in a sequined tux jacket to boot). "That's How You Got Killed Before" has a Rat Pack smarminess, and the originally ingenious "Clubland" has been turned into something too close to a tacky TV theme. The fluffy musical upholstery on "Almost Blue" blunts the impact of what may be his most heart-wrenching ballad, and Costello sadly slathers ham and cheese all over "Watching the Detectives," which was already note-perfect in its original, raw and clattering form.
"Put Away Forbidden Playthings" and "Episode of Blonde" are well served by this set's orchestral ambitions, even if Costello's voice occasionally strains at the music's long reach. But too frequently he sounds like someone with a point to prove — "Aren't I clever and brilliant?" — rather than an artist with something to say in an imaginative way, which in his day was Costello's forte. In those moments when he hits the sweet spot, like the closing grace note of "God Give Me the Strength," one hears the greatness My Flame Burns Blue too often strains to achieve. As for the bonus disc of Costello's Il Sogno suite, the pop artist's symphonic touch sounds to the pop critic like the popular classicism of a Leonard Bernstein (which is to say quite good) rather than the sort of Mozartian brilliance he once brought to rock 'n' roll. There's much to hear on this musically overstuffed venture, but not quite enough to savor for all time.
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Photo uncredited.
Cover.
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