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Clear the room and hide your baby mama's children. Forty-six-year-old singer/songwriter Elvis Costello is ready to rock again.
"I have been singing so many ballads recently that I was in the mood for some rowdy rhythm," Costello writes in the liner notes to When I Was Cruel, his first record in seven years.
Well, it's about freaking time Costello got his balls back. The man with the thick black glasses has spent most of the past decade recording well-conceived, but numbingly drowsy albums with such antidotes to coolness as the wrinkly composer Burt Bacharach (1998's Painted From Memory) and the Brodsky Quartet (1993's The Juliet Letters).
When I Was Cruel clearly announces Costello's return to rowdiness with the uplifting power pop opener "45." Middle-age crisis or not, Costello sounds as alive and confident as he did back in 1977. The return of keyboardist Pete Thomas and drummer Steve Nieve from Costello's old band The Attractions sure doesn't hurt either.
The pledge to rock and roll continues with the swirling guitars and dissonant harmonica tunings of "Dissolve," the scorching horn section and impassioned vocals of "15 Petals" and the amplified bite of "Daddy Can I Turn This?"
Costello isn't afraid to toy with some new styles in his old age either. The seven-minute "When I Was Cruel No. 2" dips into the inner depths of trip-hop through the use of ominous drums, bizarre samples and jangling guitars destined for a David Lynch film. "Soul For Hire" drops gentle beats that pop like bubbles alongside steady cymbal crashes. Costello lurks in the darkness during "…Dust," a moody product of deep big band bass drums, squabbling horns and clicking keyboard effects.
As always, Costello's cynical lyrics are as biting as a Nas and Jay-Z rhyme battle. As a piano is caressed and drums are tapped in "Tart," Costello asks, "Will it kill you to show us a little sweetness?" and screams "the flavor is tart" repeatedly. In "Alibi," he wails to a lover, "You were weak / You couldn't help it / But you never had a pony."
Like a bottle of aged wine, Costello has grown more flavorful as the years have passed. Forget his appearance in Austin Powers. Elvis is back, baby.
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