Costello has yet to make a truly bad or boring album, but lately he has taken to making overly fussy ones. Mighty Like a Rose, his 15th record, is a densely produced, wildly diverse collection, dotted with tiny lyrical and sonic epiphanies and a few elegant melodies. The session musicians don`t rock as hard as Costello`s Attractions once did, but he has produced great music before with hired guns (King of America). What`s missing, on about half the cuts, is the emotional directness that informs Costello`s best music. The slower tunes work best, such as the waltz-time "All Grown Up" and the exquisitely acidic, Leonard Cohen-like "After the Fall." But when other writers enter the mix — two collaborations left over from sessions with Paul McCartney and wife Cait O`Riordan`s "Broken" — Mighty Like a Rose withers into mediocrity.
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