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What do you get when one of the best, most consistent and prolific pop/rock songwriters of the past decade records an album made up entirely of country songs written by others, using:
• Long-time Bay Area and current Doobie Brothers musician John McFee;
• Back-up vocal group the Nashville Edition:
• Violinist Tommy Miller;
• Production by all-time Nashville schlockmeister Billy Sherrill, and finally,
• An album jacket that recalls the heyday of the Blue Note jazz label?
Well, you may get confused, but what you get for sure is Almost Blue, Elvis Costello's seventh LP (counting the odds and ends collection, Taking Liberties) released in America since 1977.
This is the long-promised (threatened?) tribute to Costello's favorites from the Grand Ole Opry, presented with an almost disconcerting attention to vocal detail.
Many singers have moved to country music after they found that, for some reason, they couldn't handle the vocal or image demands of rock music (for example. Ferlin Husky, Conway Twitty. Waylon Jennings, Kenny Rogers. Charlie Rich, et al.) or because their careers were floundering due to changes in musical trends (for example, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis).
Obviously, neither of these reasons applies to Costello. Almost Blue is a country album because Costello likes country music.
It shows.
Rest assured this is not a smart-aleck New Waver doing a tongue-in-cheek send-up of Nashville corn pone. Rather, it is a loving tribute to some of the greatest country-western songs, songwriters and singers ever to twang on wax.
Of the 12 tracks of Almost Blue, there are only two that are out-and-out rockers — Hank Williams' breakneck "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)" and a churning version of the rockabilly standard "Honey Hush." Merle Haggard's roadhouse kicker "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" moves along at a fairly rapid clip, but everything else here is as smooth as old whiskey.
Two of George Jones' (Costello's avowed C&W mentor) ballads are covered, both in keeping with the LP's "blue" theme. "Brown to Blue" works beautifully — "you've changed your name from Brown to Jones and mine from Brown to blue" — but "Color of the Blues" falls flat as Costello's voice is far too strained.
The only other composer to get double coverage is the late Gram Parsons, whose near-classic "I'm Your Toy (Hot Burrito No.1)" and "How Much I Lied" are among the highlights of the set.
Patsy Cline's monster hit "Sweet Dreams" (penned by Don Gibson), Tammy Wynette's "Too Far Gone" (by producer Billy Sherrill), and Charlie Rich's "Sittin' and Thinkin' " are all effectively rendered.
The album's real showpiece, though, is Jim Chestnut's "A Good Year for the Roses," a first-rate ballad that features Costello's finest vocal on the record. It sounds like a flat-out AM radio hit.
Sherrill's production is straightforward and ( for him ) fairly restrained. The Attractions (Costello's backing band) are likewise subdued, with the exception of Steve Nieve's lilting piano work. Doobie Brother John McFee (who, while with the band Clover. played on Costello's My Aim Is True debut) is excellent on the pedal steel guitar.
As a project, then, Almost Blue is pretty successful, particularly since Costello has virtually turned his back on the qualities which put him in the position to do such a thing. While his rock fortunes have been built on stinging guitar, biting wit and expert songwriting, Costello on Almost Blue is left standing naked, but for his voice.
And there's the rub. For as well as Costello's voice serves him on his own compositions, in no way is it the equal of nearly any of the country giants tackled here on their own turf.
Almost Blue is not the stylistic follow-up to Trust or any of its superb predecessors; it is only what it is — "for El-C fans only."
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