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Don't think of Brutal Youth, Elvis Costello said, as a reunion with the Attractions. He certainly doesn't.
"We brought in people because we thought they'd do a good job with the songs. It just seemed the right thing to do," he said of his new album, due out Tuesday. "I just sort of gathered them gradually, which is why I don't even think of it as a reunion."
Call it what you will, longtime fans of the British singer/songwriter/musician — who many critics say is equaled only by Bob Dylan — will be thrilled with Brutal Youth. After the classical The Juliet Letters, recorded with the Brodsky Quartet, and the dense Mighty Like a Rose, Costello has returned to the stripped-down sound he and the Attractions used when he smashed the barriers between punk, pop and rock on classic albums such as Trust and Armed Forces.
Costello devotees are frustrated with his career at times. He can effortlessly toss off pop/rock classics such as "Alison," "Beyond Belief" or the new songs "This is Hell" and "London's Brilliant Parade."
"In some cases it's people who maybe listened to me when I started and that's their idea of what I do — maybe the first five albums. After that, they start to get a bit perplexed because of the detours. Without doing those things, I think they'd be equally tired of you. They'd say, `He's just trotting out the same old formula.' So you can't really have it both ways."
He laughed.
"On the other hand ... I understand that attitude. I've had that same attitude about people. I mean, I don't like every Neil Young record, though I'm a big Neil Young fan. My favorite stuff is Ragged Glory, and when he's doing that, I love it."
Struggling with a case of bronchitis — a leftover from a Canadian video shoot — Costello, 39, took an hour recently to set the record straight on reunions, classical music and his career twists.
First, the classical album was one of his greatest commercial successes, both in the United States and overseas.
"The Juliet Letters was the biggest-selling album I've ever had my name on in Japan. It's already outsold Spike and Armed Forces, my other two big sellers," Costello said.
Worldwide the album has sold 250,000 copies after originally being budgeted for sales of 100,000.
"That's a hell of a lot for a chamber music record," he said.
Brutal Youth came about when Costello and drummer Pete Thomas returned to London's Pathway Studios, the same eight-track studio in which he recorded My Aim is True in the late '70s.
"I didn't even tell the record company or anybody that I was starting to make a record," he said. "It was just Pete and I in a studio. He and I were playing the songs live, with him on drums and me on electric guitar and singing live. Then I'd just dub everything else that was needed.
"As much as I enjoyed that, there were other types of songs I was writing that wouldn't suit that kind of recording. They needed more musicians to play them properly."
Producer Mitchell Froom was brought in, as was bassist Nick Lowe and former Attractions pianist Steve Nieve.
"Shortly after that, Mitchell said there are a couple of the songs that [bassist] Bruce Thomas would play great on. The next thing I knew it was the Attractions in the studio, without anybody really noticing," Costello said.
It wasn't quite that simple. Years ago, Bruce Thomas had protested bitterly when Costello had started working with musicians other than the Attractions. Thomas even wrote a book, thinly veiled as a novel, blasting his former boss.
"You know, a couple of us haven't been getting along terribly well," Costello said diplomatically. "To be honest, I don't think very many people, including us, ever expected us to be playing together again.
"But when you think about what's positive about playing together against a squabble you may have had some time ago, you think `Is it really worth it to let that stand in the way of playing?' It wasn't like `Oh, well, I've gone on my holiday, now I'll come home and put on my comfortable shoes.' If anything, you know this was going to be a bit more edgy."
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