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On the face of it, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach do not seem to be the most obvious musical duo. Many might in fact suggest Elvis and Burt are one of the odder pop couples of the season, just a little less weird than the notion of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson hitting the high notes with diva Celine Dion.
But even the skeptics were pleasantly surprised by Costello and Bacharach's first collaboration, "God Give Me Strength" from the little-seen film Grace of My Heart, and fans of sophisticated, literate adult pop are going downright wild for the tandem's first full-length effort, Painted From Memory, billed as "the new songs of Bacharach & Costello." Costello stretches his rather limited vocals on the tracks, which are doused in the rich, complex arrangements that have always been Bacharach's trademark. And the 70-year-old master of suave pop handles the orchestration, which usually includes a 24-piece string section, brass and woodwinds, and soulful back-up vocalists.
At a glance, Costello and Bacharach couldn't be more different. Bacharach is best-known for co-writing gentle golden oldies like "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," "Walk On By," and "That's What Friends Are For," and he has been recently re-appropriated as part of the lounge revival. Costello remains most famous for his early material from the late '70s, which happened to come along at the same time as the punk movement. And though he shared little musical turf with the Sex Pistols, albums like My Aim is True and This Year's Model had, if anything, even more of an angry, visceral punch than the punk records of the day.
But there's much more to both Costello and Bacharach than either of these thumbnail sketches would suggest, and, in a phone interview from New York this week, Costello said their partnership shouldn't come as a shock to longtime fans of either artist.
"For most anyone who has any proper understanding of what Burt Bacharach does, the last thing they would refer to him as, is easy listening," said the loquacious, intense Costello.
"There's a deep strain of emotion in his compositions. The gentleness of tone and the elegance of the way a lot of the music's expressed, it's coincidental that it happened to have been absorbed into the lounge scene. In the same way, people still have some lingering idea that I'm something to do with some sort of rock 'n' roll movement. Well, I never said that. That was just some label stuck on the music I did 20 years ago. For anyone that's paid any attention to what I've been up to in the past five or 10 years, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise that I could do this. I've done a lot of collaborative work and most of it is outside of the framework of the music I began with. The path I've taken since that time has been to put a human face on some of those early ideas."
Often enough, Costello's fans have had a tough time following his eclectic musical experiments, which have ranged from nouveau Nashville (Almost Blue) to contemporary classical (The Juliet Letters). But, for once, his timing seems right on the mark. Bacharach is back big-time.
The new lounge kids love the white-haired composer, his songs featured prominently in the Julia Roberts movie My Best Friend's Wedding, and he made a memorable cameo appearance tickling the ivories in Austin Powers. (Bacharach and Costello will be in one scene in the coming Austin Powers sequel, The Spy Who Shagged Me.) There is a new boxed-set, The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection, and a TV special, Burt Bacharach One Amazing Night with Costello, Sheryl Crow, All Saints, and the Barenaked Ladies paying tribute to the tunesmith behind gems like "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?"
Bacharach's known for his ultra-complex arrangements, chock-full of odd time shifts, nuanced harmonies, and rhythmic peaks and valleys, and Costello concedes that the album was one of his toughest vocal chores ever.
"They're on the edge of my ability, but I like to go there because I think that's where the danger and feeling are."
In contrast to some of the more opaque Costello lyrics from the past decade, the writing is refreshingly uncluttered on Painted From Memory and the songs never stray far from one of his favourite topics — the darker side of love, romance, and break-ups.
"I've always been fond of thematic records," said Costello. "Not concept albums, which suggests someone running around with a wolf's head on their head, like in some god-awful rock opera. I mean thematic albums in the way that Blood on the Tracks is a thematic album or (Joni Mitchell's) Blue. They're not too common in the modern time and certainly not one done with a pop orchestra."
Painted From Memory doesn't sound like anything else on the record-shelves today, which suits Costello just fine. "Thank goodness for that. If I thought it fit in, I'd be really upset because I thought we were making something original. One of the great delusions of modern musical commerce is that something desirable is something that sounds like something else. The reason that writers I grew up admiring were signed — whether they were Bob Dylan or the Beatles or Burt Bacharach for that matter — was because they didn't sound like everyone else."
Costello and Bacharach did a select number of shows following the release of the disc and they'll do more in the new year — if there's enough sales support for the album. Bacharach, who studied at McGill, has already said that if they tour in Canada, he wants to bring the show to Montreal.
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