|
To cut to the chase: Wise Up Ghost, the complex, cross-generational, sparks-flying collaboration between Elvis Costello and The Roots, is one of rock's great clarifying albums. It shows what the music sounds like when it grows up.
Texturally sparse, rhythmically akimbo, intellectually unsettling, it reveals Costello working the same rough turf as HBO's The Wire with his multi-view surveillance of contemporary violence in a pressure-cooked urban setting. "Tripwire" is a tinkly tunes lullaby of paranoia. ("Don't open the door because they're here.") The seductive female terrorist in "(She Might Be A) Grenade" — a revisiting of an earlier Costello song, "She's Pulling Out the Pin" — might be about to blow up the posh life found in "Viceroy's Row."
Fine. But now imagine The Wire with musical uplift. Costello's voice is surprisingly and gloriously lyrical on the superb "Cinco Minutos Con Vos," although his generally strangulated singing makes Tom Waits sound like Perry Como. Hints of vintage soul are stirred everywhere like sweeteners into an otherwise craggy 11-cut album that crosses paths with hip hop before it inevitably heads in a direction all its own. These '70s references are mainly due to the presence of Roots drummer Ahmir-Khalib "Questlove" Thompson, today's one-man old soul revivalist. Costello and Questlove first crossed paths during the 59-year-old singer's appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon where the 42-year-old leads house band The Roots. Roots producer Steve Mandel is the other significant contributor. Their alliance, rather than being "uneasy," as one critic has suggested, results in some of the most remarkably razor-sharp intelligent music making in any field in recent years.
|
