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I'm always suspicious when I like a record on first hearing as much as I liked The Juliet Letters. Most pop recordings (not the great ones) offer up all their treasures on first hearing, sounding ever paler with each replay. But two weeks and lots of listenings later, The Juliet Letters just keeps sounding better and better.
It's about time. As much as I raved about Costello's Spike a few years back, it teetered on the edge of being over-produced, overripe, and overwrought; only Costello's passion and some very strong material made it all work. Nothing could save Spike's successor, Mighty Like A Rose, which was virtually unlistenable in the florid turgidity of its track upon track of unnecessary over-arrangements of virtually impenetrable lyrics. Besides, it neither rocked nor swung. I mean, didn't this guy used to be called a punk, however inaccurately? It was long past time for a return to basics.
But what a set of basics Costello has gone back to: the string quartet, as elemental a combo within the classical tradition as drums, bass, rhythm, and lead (read: The Attractions) are to rock, or the piano trio is to jazz. The wisdom of such a move is one artists seem always in need of relearning: the freedoms found within the restraints of a limited set of tools.
But before you get the wrong idea: Elvis Costello did not bring his latest batch of tunes to some hack arranger to have them set for string quartet, which the contract players then recorded, after which EC came in to lay down vocal tracks. No, the words and music of virtually every song on this generous disc are collaborations between Costello and the Brodsky Quartet, who must now add "composers" to their already well-filled resumes. The writing is seamless; it's clear that EC could not have written this album without the Brodskys, nor they without him.
The results are stunning. Rather than some hybrid of rock and classical, whether "Third Stream" or crossover, The Juliet Letters is unique in my experience in sounding as if it was created totally without compromise: it is 100% a rock album and 100% a contemporary string quartet recording. (Turns out that, unbeknownst to each other, Costello and the Brodsky had been attending each others' concerts for years.) Though there are musical references to Bartok, Broadway, Shostakovich, Weill, and the Strausses R. and J., The Juliet Letters has a consistently taut, astringent voice of its own. The Brodsky's playing is bitingly strong, with overpowering rhythmic authority and a keen sense of dramatic dynamics, all complemented by a dancing grace, whether ironic (as in "Damnation's Cellar") or earnest ("Romeo's Seance").
Perhaps the greatest miracle of this record is the evidence it offers of the continuing evolution of Elvis Costello, Singer. Here he is without a net, no rhythm section, a musical illiterate (he's taking lessons) singing songs full of unexpected rhythmic and harmonic twists and turns, surprising resolutions or none at all, and downright chromatic developments — all with some of the power, and considerably more than the passion (if not the voice), of an opera singer. Any number of times on this record, even after the many times I've now heard it, I hear Costello gearing up to reach some note obviously beyond his range, and I wince in anticipation of crack and strain — and then he catches it, full-voiced, with just the slightest hint of raggedness to let you know how much it cost him, and how worthwhile it was, This is world-class singing of a sort I have never heard before, whether in opera house, rock arena, or jazz club.
The songwriting itself is the most lucid and powerful Costello has done in years. The unifying conceit of The Juliet Letters was inspired by a newspaper article of a Veronese university professor who for years has been answering letters addressed to "Juliet Capulet." The 17 songs here (there are also three instrumentals) are all epistolary: chain letters, suicide notes, letters home from the war, collected letters to the family firm of solicitors over a lifetime of legal imbroglios, letters from the living to the dead, no less than three from the dead to the living, letters about other letters; and, of course, love letters. There's little rhyme, but plenty of Costello's trademark cleverness, and the variety of narrative voices gives EC and the Brodsky much to work with. How's this for a song subject: in EC's words, a suicide "who believes in the afterlife leaves a letter for his atheist lover" ("The First to Leave"). Death haunts these songs, and the Brodsky's fin de siècle hints of Mahler and Strauss are apt. In the three songs which close the album, the listener is offered the choice of hell, heaven, or oblivion. After "The First to Leave," "Damnation's Cellar" evokes a funny and horrible Hell to a music-hall tune as if composed by Van Dyke Parks. The album closes with "The Birds Will Still Be Singing," in which EC bittersweetly joins the great tradition of British Pastoralism as invented by Delius and Vaughan Williams. The only sour tone is struck in the mean-spirited "Swine" and the heavy-handed "This Offer Will Not Be Repeated," in which a little vocal restraint would have carried Costello a good bit farther.
Costello's lengthy liner note is witty, informative, and engagingly self-deprecating as he describes the collaborative process, hints at an interpretation of each song, and ends with a note sure to warm every audiophile's heart: "The decision to make an analog recording was a purely aesthetic one, founded on my firm conviction that for everything that digital recording gains in noise reduction and supposed clarity, there are unacceptable losses of warmth and depth." The entire affair was recorded live in the studio with no EQ, and reverb added only to EC's voice. Still, this is hardly state-of-the-art string quartet sound; the strings are steely and dry, and the Brodsky is pretty much split down the middle to create a slot for Costello's voice, which is mixed in rather unnecessarily upfront. Compared to the way strings are usually handled on a pop recording, however, The Juliet Letters sounds stunningly natural.
It's also the best thing Costello has ever done. From the vantage point of The Juliet Letters, "Less Than Zero" now seems almost as far away as "Love Me Do."
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