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It took some maneuvering for fans to hear what they waited eight years to hear at Elvis Costello's reunion show with his Attractions, Wednesday night.
Appearing at Central Park's Summerstage, Costello and his best-loved backup band lost many in the crowd from sound restrictions that rendered his music hopelessly remote to a significant portion of the venue.
Following years of battles with local residents over noise control, the Summerstage planners have agreed to sound levels that now drop to a near whisper in the venue's back quarter. Anyone who stood toward the rear heard the Attractions as if they were coming over an AM transistor radio at the beach during a rainstorm. Pete Thomas' drumming sounded as though he were tapping on a cardboard cereal box.
Which made worming one's way toward the front mandatory. Especially since one of the Attractions' biggest calling cards remains their in-your-face scrappiness.
In their years apart, Costello benefited from more eclectic and ornate backup groups, but in the process he sacrificed his original combo's pithiness and punch.
At Summerstage, not only did Costello and the band recall their angry early days, they played with a cruel new precision. In versions of the vitriolic "Lipstick Vogue" or "Accidents Will Happen," Costello sang with greater clarity and breath control, but no less violence. Likewise, the Attractions showed more dexterity than in the old days — without losing their bloodthirstiness.
Live, the material from the group's comeback album, "Brutal Youth," found a closer connection to their early work. Axing some of the production frills and speeding up the pace added excitement to songs like "Clown Strike" and "13 Steps Lead Down."
But Costello brought a chilling new quiet to "Still Too Soon to Know," a song that underscores his oldest theme about love — that it's never too late to lose affection.
The musicians emphasized the link between old Elvis and new by shunning much of his material in between. They offered but one song from the four albums Costello cut without the band, "Deep Dark Truthful Mirror," which, in its acoustic form, essentially amounted to an Elvis solo piece.
Still, some of the two-hour show's most impressive moments came from his less popular period with the Attractions. In "Beyond Belief' and "Man Out of Time," Costello and the band nimbly negotiated melody lines of novelistic reach.
The band seemed most pleased to perform early hits, however, delivering them with enough fire to subvert nostalgia. In six songs from the classic This Year's Model, they displayed what fans most missed: those questioning bass lines of Bruce Thomas protruding over ripe organ swells from Steve Nieve — driven home by supertaut snare drum cracks from Pete Thomas. In such flourishes, the Attractions found the kicking dynamics of the great rock bands.
Their fine ear for each other's playing made Costello's final declaration to the crowd all the more aching.
"We don't know if we'll ever see you again," he announced dramatically.
Which, as much as anything, captured what makes relationships between players or people so exciting: You never know what's coming next.
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