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Does anybody else think Elvis Costello looks like a Norman Rockwell character on acid with his new look?
Oh well, that's not important right now. What is important, in fact, what is vital is Mighty Like A Rose, Costello's first album in two years, and a worthy successor to the triumphant Spike.
Mighty Like A Rose has Costello more experimental than perhaps ever before, employing a more complicated orchestration and a more contemplative sass than Spike, that album itself full of pop venom.
The first single, "The Other Side Of Summer," has Costello taking off wickedly on a pop ditty wrapped in seething and insecure emotions. Costello's message? That not everything wrapped in a pretty package is harmless.
More political and personal musings follow, including the usual and still worthwhile Costello slaps at futile governmental ignorance, and the obscenity of existing in a culture lacking self-value and an unwillingness to right long-term wrongs — hunger, war, political prostitution.
Costello's wife, Cait O'Riordan, late of the Pogues, contributes the smoldering "Broken," while new pal Paul McCartney co-writes "So Like Candy" and "Playboy To A Man," destined to further continue those Costello/McCartney and Lennon/McCartney comparisons.
Produced by the always effective Mitchell Froom, the album also brings in a conglomeration of some the world's best post-punk musicians, including Froom, Nick Lowe, Benmont Tench, Marc Ribot, Jim Keltner and even legendary trumpeter Ross MacManus and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.
Mighty Like A Rose is vintage Costello-as-adult, and blooms on the outside, with an epicenter that wilts with knowing, angry emotion. It's such a mixed package that makes Costello as vital as ever.
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