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Elvis Costello has gone through a 14-year pop career by making changes.
From new wave rebel to rock elder statesman, he has kept coming up with something different. We've had package tour, soul revue, and even, on a particularly jovial tour, a wheel of fortune to decide the running order.
This time the show is again unexpected, though it does not exactly offer anything that feels new.
It feels, in fact, more like someone who doesn't know where to go next — and for Elvis Costello, that is a surprise.
He has already had some criticism for this show — though the Liverpool audience's response was never less than enthusiastic — and it does lack the fun and flair of previous occasions.
Some of the problem is to do with his current backing band. The Rude 5 (there are actually four of them).
While they play well, the sound is rather unfocused. They come across as four separate musicians, not as a band.
Some of the songs, too, have separated into words and music that seem ill-fittingly matched.
Old songs like "Watching The Detectives" and "Veronica," or new ones from the Mighty Like A Rose album, suffer equally.
Some are thrown away, others stretched out; either way the rhythmic and melodic impetus of the original versions gets lost.
The moments when the band let rip as much as Costello's pen has done were the times when his songs really sounded like themselves. It's all the change that was needed.
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