A hopeless romantic
Elvis Costello at the Schauspielhaus.
English via Google Translate...
Hamburg - How times change: time after 90 minutes, a roadie comes on stage. But not with mind-altering substances outside the law, but, quite good, with a teapot for refills. Elvis Costello, the cunning Master - bully and punk rockers of the past, wearing a brave suit in verhuschtem dark brown.
With the yellow label on his new album " North ", he even received the image consecrations of high culture. But behind the geeky horn-rimmed glasses of the 48 year-old there is still very much a shrewd head, in Costello's chest beats a sensitive heart, but the mind is entirely free from the nagging irony of earlier years. The man has become a classic romantic. Hopelessly, and that right gladly.
In the dim light of the Playhouse stage, which gives the dish another layer of classic patina, Costello joins a Song bead to the next. If the term "recital" not occupied by the E- Music - fitting with colleagues, here at Costello and his longtime buddy Steve Nieve on the wing, he would fit. The actual songs are as timeless good and so complex sound so much like source studies with Bacharach and Schubert, Gershwin, Broadway and Van Morrison, that they could bear opus numbers smooth, without being snooty or arts and crafts .
Perhaps Costello should have used one of those old tube microphones, as a tribute to crooner legends such as Sinatra, Tony Bennett and the late Billie Holiday. But even with the modern micro goes Costello confidently to: he often ignores it easy. Can it be left clinging to the wings, the pathetic helplessness of his four-minute dramas sings unamplified from the body. At the end of one of his many encores, after more than two hours, he remains in the dark thinker - understanding of the world, an understanding that women, that is good. In most other such things that would be rather embarrassing. In Costello, earnest and charm. And so that is seen with the tea, ultimately, very cool. jomi
published on 24 October 2003 in Culture / Media
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