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On only his third album this decade, Costello continues to plunder his own past for inspiration. His last record — Wise Up Ghost, the 2013 collaboration with The Roots — revelled in dicing and splicing back-pages fragments to create intriguing new pieces, but Look Now is, in various places, a more straightforward archaeological exercise.
Long-term fans will recognise a handful of these songs from the tail-end of the 20th century. The 60s‑set shame of pregnancy out of wedlock "Unwanted Number" was one of two commissions (along with "God Give Me Strength") for the 1996 film Grace Of My Heart, performed by fictional girl group For Real, while both "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter" (a co-write with Carole King) and "Suspect My Tears" made intermittent appearances in live sets, usually with the sole accompaniment of Steve Nieve's delicate piano.
Then there's "Under Lime," a new chapter in the story of the world-weary vaudevillian at the centre of "Jimmie Standing In The Rain," from 2010's National Ransom. It's 20 years on, and Jimmie is a largely forgotten figure, thrown into the hustle and bustle of a late 50s television studio, about to be mocked and ridiculed as a mystery guest on a light entertainment panel show.
Grim stuff, perhaps, but Costello couches the tale in a sound that recalls the pomp orchestrations of The Walker Brothers, peppered with pop-baroque woodwind. The song's placing as the opening track on Look Now serves as an astute curtain-raiser for what's to come: the grandeur and elegance of much of the album knowingly harks back to 1982's Imperial Bedroom and the 1998 two-hander with Burt Bacharach, Painted From Memory.
For a man who has claimed several times over the last few years to have little interest in making new albums, preferring to pursue his “vocation” as a live performer, Costello has fashioned a wonderfully cohesive record, its depth, breadth and maturity revealing fresh surprises with every play. He's said it was long-serving drummer Pete Thomas who finally persuaded him to re-enter the studio, though judging by the results, last year's standalone "You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way" (from the soundtrack of Film Stars Don't Die In Liverpool and included as one of four bonus tracks on the deluxe version of Look Now) might also have been a spark. The sophisticated work of his jazz pianist wife Diana Krall is arguably another touchstone.
The last album to credit The Imposters on the front sleeve was 2008's Momofuku, a partial return to the short, sharp urgency of This Year's Model, but these songs are a formidably more luxuriant showcase for the players' versatility — very much the work of a band, as opposed to a solo artist — while songs from a female perspective ("Don't Look Now," "Stripping Paper," "Unwanted Number," "He's Given Me Things") are a far cry from the perceived wounded misogyny of old.
This is very grown-up pop music; awash with the memorable hooks and lyrical dexterity we'd expect from Costello, with layer after layer of fascinating melodic conceits and themes.
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