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| <span style="font-size:92%">'''Canberra Times''' [[Canberra Times index|{{n}}]] </span>
| <span style="font-size:92%">'''Canberra Times''' [[Canberra Times index|{{n}}]] </span>
[[Canberra Times, July 16, 2002|2002 July 16]]<br>
*[[Canberra Times, July 14, 1978|1978 July 14]]
*[[Canberra Times, October 26, 1978|1978 October 26]]
*[[Canberra Times, November 9, 1978|1978 November 9]]
*[[Canberra Times, December 5, 1978|1978 December 5]]
*[[Canberra Times, December 8, 1978|1978 December 8]]
*[[Canberra Times, April 6, 1979|1979 April 6]]
*[[Canberra Times, April 11, 1980|1980 April 11]]
*[[Canberra Times, January 19, 1981|1981 January 19]]
*[[Canberra Times, January 11, 1982|1982 January 11]]
*[[Canberra Times, June 1, 1982|1982 June 1]]
*[[Canberra Times, April 25, 1984|1984 April 25]]
*[[Canberra Times, May 23, 1984|1984 May 23]]
*[[Canberra Times, May 30, 1984|1984 May 30]]
*[[Canberra Times, April 5, 1986|1986 April 5]]
*[[Canberra Times, April 13, 1986|1986 April 13]]
*[[Canberra Times, November 12, 1987|1987 November 12]]
*[[Canberra Times, November 15, 1987|1987 November 15]]
*[[Canberra Times, August 29, 1991|1991 August 29]]
*[[Canberra Times, September 23, 1991|1991 September 23]]
*[[Canberra Times, January 31, 1997|1997 January 31]]
*[[Canberra Times, July 16, 2002|2002 July 16]]
*[[Canberra Times, September 4, 2004|2004 September 4]]
*[[Canberra Times, January 18, 2013|2013 January 18]]
*[[Canberra Times, November 15, 2015|2015 November 15]][http://www.canberratimes.com.au/entertainment/books/m14booksrev2-20151105-gkrrna {{t}}]
*[[Canberra Times, January 1, 2016|2016 January 1]]
*[[Canberra Times, January 21, 2022|2022 January 21]]
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Notes:
 
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January 31, 1997
 
ELVIS COSTELLO AND STEVE NIEVE
Costello & Nieve
(Warner Bros)
*****
 
BERNARD ZUEL
 
This is a gem of a release, a once-only package that justifies getting yourself to a record shop immediately and buying one of these limited-issue boxed sets (only 1,000 are on sale in Australia). There are five, 25-minute discs, recorded live in American cities across a week last May and, apart from a short visit from drummer Pete Thomas, it is Elvis Costello and his long-time keyboard player, Steve Nieve.
 
This is definitely not Costello and Nieve from the more roistering E.C. and The Attractions albums - it's much closer in spirit and execution to the dark beauty of 1982's Imperial Bedroom. We are in intimate mode. Imagine a small room, a spotlight on a stage slightly raised above the tables and chairs arranged around it. The microphone isn't swung about but held softly, the (real, not electric) piano is simply miked.
 
Since his recording with The Brodsky Quartet on The Juliet Letters, Costello uses his voice more selectively and effectively, pliable and expressive - wrapping itself around the words, not just spitting them out.
 
Listen to him, for example, taking My Funny Valentine (which he first recorded nearly 20 years ago) or his own late '70s B-side Just A Memory and stretching their pathos, or reconstructing I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself into a torch song hanging by a thread. Or taking Why Can't A Man Stand Alone, from his 1996 album All This Useless Beauty, and screwing up the tension a notch at a time until you feel something must break.
 
In this context - piano and voice primarily, guitar occasionally - there is nothing to distract you from the singing or the playing. The sound is so clear, so full of depth, that the flaws in Costello's voice are softened, the clarity of Nieve's piano technique accentuated.
 
It is a perfect environment for Nieve's playing. Always a dab hand with a jaunty hook or the Pele-like dribble through a trademark Costello melody, Nieve has too often been overlooked when he is a player with delicacy at his beck and call, with warmth just under the note.
 
There's so much more to say: the often very funny between-song talk, the choice of covers in each city (The Miracles' bracket in New York, for example), the sheer beauty of Man Out Of Time. To miss out on this collection would be a tragedy. Don't.
 
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http://www.canberratimes.com.au/zoom/archive/rSMH010505DR8K67BQ0UA
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/121588821/ (Sydney Morning Herald)
May 05 2001
 
Pop goes the aria
 
Bernard Zuel / Sydney Morning Herald
 
 
ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER AND ELVIS COSTELLO
Anne Sofie von Otter Elvis Costello
 
For The Stars
(Deutsche Grammophon)
 
An operatic voice finds a satisfying way to sing pop without the cringe.
 
While Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter calls this her pop record, it isn't quite. It is pop, but it's not Kylie. It's more the kind of sophisticated, interpretative examination of popular song that pre-dates rock 'n' roll.
 
For those coming to this from contemporary music forms, it can sound mild and short of the rush of excitement of pop music. After all, the opening track, No Wonder, owes as much to a Schubert lieder as it does to a Buddy Holly ballad.
 
But the elegance that is For The Stars' first defining element is not the end of it. Unlike some of those truly appalling "pop" recordings by operatically trained voices, von Otter doesn't sound as if she's slumming it. Eschewing her upper register and vibrato, she sings close to the microphone with a voice that has echoes of Peggy Lee and Lena Horne and sounds as if it could fill the room but doesn't need to.
 
When she wraps herself around Jessie Mae Robinson's The Other Woman - or Costello and Cait O'Riordan's Baby Plays Around - the warmth stands out more than the undoubted richness of the voice. And her version of Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus's Like An Angel Passing Through My Room aches with the obverse of the assurance she invests in both Rope (music by Swedish avant-garde group Fleshquartet, lyrics by Costello) and Green Song (music by Svante Henryson, lyrics by Costello).
 
Even better, on Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), one of those alarmingly beautiful Brian Wilson/Tony Asher ballads from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, she leads with her heart rather than her head. However, von Otter's interpretation of Kate McGarrigle's Go Leave is more problematic. Her delivery is more mannered here, as if the tune, with its antecedents in 19th-century folk, needs careful handling. It doesn't, and the result is a distancing from the heart of the song. There's a similar problem with the Beatles' For No One where von Otter tiptoes around the melody rather than engaging with it directly.
 
These are rare failures. The successes are more numerous and come in different forms, too. Another Wilson/Asher gem, You Still Believe In Me, is given a counter-melody (sung by Costello) that accentuates the beauty of the main vocal line.
 
Think carefully before buying this but if approached correctly For The Stars is rich with rewards.
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