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Despite Elvis Costello and the Roots both having a propensity for serial collaborations (not always with knockout results), Wise Up Ghost – the product of a match-up between the grizzled veteran and the hip-hop heavyweights – is a triumph.
From the opening seconds, where a melodic montage of computer sound-effects introduces the robust stride of "Walk Us Uptown," a song that could quite easily have been found crawling around the outskirts of Costello's 1978 album, This Year's Model, there is a sense of playfulness and rediscovery.
Sounding in fine voice, Costello works through his modes, from bruised crooner on the jaw-dropping "Tripwire" and closer "If I Could Believe" to laidback funky fellow on highlight "Come The Meantimes" and "Wake Me Up," rarely indulging in the overly studied vocal affectations that have tended to blight his late-career work.
Juxtaposing lyrics and refrains from his past with fresh musical constructions and lyrical additions, Costello creates new, refined narratives that end up revealing much more than the originals did. Revelling in the self-referencing, he hits notes, in text and in performance, that recall his decade-long dream run of albums with the Attractions, somehow making this his least self-conscious and most relaxed album for many years.
As imposing a collaborator as he is, the success of Wise Up Ghost has much to do with the way space is filled, and left, by chief protagonists and self-avowed Costello nuts drummer and arranger Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and producer Steve Mandel.
The Roots' growing stature, in their transformation from unimpeachable hip-hop back-up outfit of choice to ferociously on-point elder statesmen and Jimmy Fallon's house band, shouldn't be underestimated; they are on fire throughout. Nor should the input of Mandel, who was instrumental in the process of assembling loops and piecing it all together on an album that uses collage techniques extensively.
That theme runs right through to the album cover, which is a lift on the iconic design of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Pocket Poet's Series, with further image recycling and repurposing in the booklet.
Clever cultural referencing aside, this is no stuffy intellectual exercise. The lyrical tone may be as dark and acerbic as expected, but there is an overwhelming vitality, helped by Questlove's fanboy mission to out-Attraction the Attractions, that is simply irrepressible on this predominantly spectacular collision.
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