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After an Elvis Costello concert talk will inevitably revolve around the songs that got away. Here, for instance (on the first date of his latest UK tour, and the first of four Fridays at this venue), I was disappointed not to have heard "Red Shoes," "Beyond Belief" or "Veronica," and that he played nothing at all from his Trust and Punch the Clock albums. Yet such is the depth of his repertoire that even if he had carried on playing until daybreak, there would still have been complaints about what had been left out.
Anyway, it seems churlish to carp about a show lasting two and a quarter hours, in which Costello, backed by his ever-dependable Attractions, performed a generous sprinkling of classics, such as "Oliver's Army" and "Accidents Will Happen," among newer material, including the title track from his latest album, All This Useless Beauty.
But what was especially impressive about this absorbing, sometimes compelling show was that, while many of the older songs were rendered in a radically modified form, the changes were mostly done with sensitivity and imagination, rather than gratuitously.
"Pump It Up," for instance, instead of being a throbbing power-pop thrash, became a sprightly zydeco busk, with keyboard player Steve Nieve on accordion. "Man Out Of Time" was downsized from its original pomp and grandeur to become an impressively sparse, semi-acoustic affair.
Only "The Long Honeymoon" was ill-judged: the original, from the Imperial Bedroom album, set Costello's tale of marital disillusionment against a sleazy, shuffling cocktail-bar beat, but here the sole accompaniment was a grand piano, which rather robbed the song of its sense of menace.
The only other complaint will be one familiar to Costello fans: when it came to the encores, which accounted for a third of the proceedings, things began to go pear-shaped. He rambled, he jammed, he played some rather clumsy guitar solos, he medleyed. After 20 minutes of this, I felt like shouting, "Get on with it!"
Fortunately, he did, with stunning renditions of "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding" and "It's Time" — a crushingly honest end-of-relationship song — which demonstrated two things.
First, that Elvis Costello's best moments always seem to be sparked by extremes of emotion — usually rage or jealousy.
And second, that nearly 20 years after the release of his debut album, his bulging portfolio of top-class material just keeps on getting fatter, and that he remains — Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn notwithstanding — one of the finest songwriters of his generation.
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