Stars And Stripes, October 19, 2018

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Stars And Stripes

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Elvis lives!


David Bauder / Associated Press

Once vowing not to record anymore, Costello is back

Besides the fact that he's still here, Elvis Costello's fans can be grateful that he's open to changing his mind. While something short of a vow, Costello said in 2010 that he didn't plan to record anymore. Yet on Oct. 12, he released Look Now, his second disc since that declaration. The lush showcase for his backing band, the Imposters, is musically inspired by Dusty Springfield's "Dusty in Memphis" and has a renewed collaboration with Burt Bacharach at its heart.

Costello, 64, is around to talk about it because he was treated for what was described as a small but aggressive form of cancer this year. The world learned about it, somewhat to his regret, when he had to cancel some concerts.

The changing music business had taught Costello, like other older artists, that there was a diminishing return to recording.

"I didn't feel like I could justify the vanity of making records, compared to making my living with what I do most of the time, which is do shows," he told The Associated Press. "Up until that point, it had always been that (recording and touring) were connected, and it was just finding a way to disconnect them again."

Thus began his "impresario years." He's had a handful of themed concert tours, including one focusing on the period around his 1982 Imperial Bedroom album and another accompanied by a game show-like "spinning songbook" that determined the evening's setlist.

He didn't stop writing, however, although much of it was aimed toward theater. He and Bacharach, 90, with whom he made the 1998 record Painted From Memory, are working on a stage show.

While waiting for that to progress, longtime drummer Pete Thomas encouraged Costello to record some of the new material that had backed up. Costello recognized that his three-piece band had never really shown its range on an album, and concentrated on the garage band side of his diverse catalogue while in concert.

The work on Look Now is ballad-heavy and lightly soulful, with plenty of space for the rhythm section of Thomas and Davey Faragher, the keyboards of Steve Nieve, orchestration and backing vocals. This was his original idea for a follow-up to Painted From Memory years ago, although Costello didn't get to it. He said it benefits from the extra time and experience.

"Do we sound like we're old?" he said. "No, we sound like we know what we're doing and are alert to the possibilities. We could play it a lot of ways, but we decided to play it like this."

He said he's "tremendously happy that I went in and did it with these guys."

The songs, which include a 20-year-old collaboration with Carole King, tell typically complex stories: a woman stripping wallpaper and reflecting on a failed relationship, a rich woman who disdains the former lover hired to paint her portrait, a woman whose childhood memories are haunted by her father's infidelities. In three of the songs, he sings from the perspective of a female narrator.

Another highlight is "Unwanted Number," a song he wrote for the female band For Real in the 1990s, about a woman deciding to raise a child born from a youthful relationship. He subtly rewrites the song to deemphasize the childhood abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and put more focus on her choice to raise the baby.

Material written with Bacharach — most notably "Photographs Can Lie" and "He's Given Me Things" — set the record's tone.

Costello said he and Bacharach haven't given up on Broadway.

It's just a question of securing the financial backing.

"I can understand the caution of producers," he said. "They're trying to make a stage production out of 12 songs that are slow and melancholy, and adding another 10 that are slow and melancholy. You could understand if a hard-headed producer says, 'Well, where's the tap dancing?"'

Look Now was delayed for release after an agreement with one record company fell through. Costello notes ruefully in an essay that he couldn't shake the thought that "such minds had determined my value long ago and might wait out the windfall should I become a posthumous artist, although that was a career opportunity I was unprepared to pursue just now."

Fans were shaken by the thought that might come sooner rather than later when they heard of his cancer scare. He had tried to push through with concert dates, despite a doctor's advice, and found he wasn't physically ready. Canceling the shows required an explanation, but Costello winces at how it escaped his control. Unfounded speculation that he was at death's door upset his family.

"I had some very nice messages from people I've never met or saw on the street saying very nice things about me," he said. "And, of course, there are one or two who say, 'I never liked him anyway. I hope he dies.'"


Tags: Look NowThe ImpostersSebastian KrysBurt BacharachCarole KingSteve NievePete ThomasDavey FaragherKitten KuroiBriana LeeBurnt Sugar Is So BitterUnwanted NumberWhy Won't Heaven Help Me?He's Given Me ThingsPhotographs Can LieStripping PaperUnder LimeI Let The Sun Go DownFor RealPainted From MemoryDusty SpringfieldDusty In MemphisImperial BedroomGeoff EmerickThe BeatlesAfrodiziakPunch The ClockSpectacular Spinning Songbook

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Stars And Stripes, October 19, 2018


David Bauder interviews Elvis Costello.

(Variations of this piece ran in the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, Berkshire Eagle, Daily Oklahoman, National Post, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Stars And Stripes, Toronto Star and others.)


Pablo Gorondi reviews Look Now.

Images

2018-10-19 Stars And Stripes page 36.jpg
Photo by James O'Mara.



Costello looks at misery on sumptuous new album


Pablo Gorondi / Associated Press

2018-10-19 Stars And Stripes page 37 clipping 02.jpg

Like in "Anna Karenina," the characters in Look Now, Elvis Costello's sumptuous new album with The Imposters, are each unhappy in their own way.

A woman who laments her deteriorated marriage while doing some renovations around the house ("Stripping Paper"); a dilapidated music-hall singer whose return to showbiz may be brief ("Under Lime"); a daughter pondering her dad's infidelity ("Photographs Can Lie"); someone grieving the end of the British empire ("I Let the Sun Go Down") and so on.

What make it easy to be sympathetic with even the most pitiable of those in these very human songs are Costello's elegant melodies and arrangements, which result in a kind of silkier, even more debonair version of Imperial Bedroom, his 1982 album produced by recently departed Beatles recording engineer Geoff Emerick.

Costello's guitars are mostly in a supporting role. Horns, woodwinds and strings — and some of the liveliest backing vocals on an E.C. album since Afrodiziak lit up Punch the Clock — plus the deft hands of The Imposters and Argentine-born co-producer Sebastian Krys, turn Look Now into one of his most sonically gratifying records.

Burt Bacharach composed some of the music and Costello also dusted off "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter," another tale of domestic gloom, written years ago with Carole King. But there are several others, including "Why Won't Heaven Help Me" and "Stripping Paper," which show how deeply those 1960s sounds, from pop to soul, influenced Costello and how expertly he applies them in his own superlative songwriting.

Costello said he recorded the lead vocals as he was recovering from a cancer scare and it made him feel invigorated instead of depressed. The power of his voice here, including that characteristic long-wave vibrato, confirms his mood.

Those in Costello's songs might be miserable, but Look Now will make its listeners happy.


Page scans and clipping.
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