Uncut, November 2010

From The Elvis Costello Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
... Bibliography ...
727677787980818283
848586878889909192
939495969798990001
020304050607080910
111213141516171819
202122232425 26 27 28


Uncut

Ultimate Music Guide


UK & Ireland magazines

-

National Ransom

Elvis Costello

Alastair McKay

Declan's back. In the 1920s. And other decades.
4-star reviews4-star reviews4-star reviews4-star reviews

The title, and Tony Millionaire's cover art, suggest this ambitious album is Costello's response to the new austerity. In parts, it may be; the title track seems to fit Wall Street crashes of whichever decade. But there's much more besides. Produced, again, by T Bone Burnett, but veering away from the bluegrass stylings of Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, towards a kind of orchestrated R'n'B, with flurries of old-time whimsy, The Beatles gone gothic ("Church Underground") and vaudevillian storytelling, it's dense and sometimes obscure. The highpoint is "Bullets For The Newborn King," a sweet lament written from the viewpoint of a regretful assassin, but "You Hung The Moon" (a swoony ballad about a seance for an executed deserter) and "One Bell Ringing" (about Jean Charles de Menezes?) offer strangely dreamy interludes on a record which is preoccupied with lies and death.

-
<< >>

Uncut, No. 162, November 2010


Alastair McKay reviews National Ransom.

Images

2010-11-00 Uncut clipping 01.jpg
Clipping.

Cover.
2010-11-00 Uncut cover.jpg

-



Back to top

External links