London Guardian, September 12, 2013: Difference between revisions
m (Zmuda moved page The Guardian, September 12, 2013 to London Guardian, September 12, 2013) |
(formatting / .update links) |
||
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Bibliography header}} | {{Bibliography header}} | ||
{{:Bibliography index}} | {{:Bibliography index}} | ||
{{: | {{:London Guardian index}} | ||
{{:UK & Irish newspapers index}} | |||
{{Bibliography article header}} | {{Bibliography article header}} | ||
<center><h3> Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs </h3></center> | <center><h3> Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs </h3></center> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
<center> Alexis Petridis </center> | <center> Alexis Petridis </center> | ||
---- | ---- | ||
''' | '''Elvis Costello and the Roots turn out to be a surprisingly <br> good musical fit on this eerie, angry collaboration. | ||
{{4of5stars}} | |||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
Both Elvis Costello and [[the Roots]] are what you might call serial collaborators. At an age when a lot of artists sink into comforting nostalgia — making albums that wilfully evoke the albums that made them famous in the first place — Costello seems instead to have embarked on a quest to find new partners to spark his muse: from Burt Bacharach to Allen Toussaint to Swedish mezzo-soprano Annie Sofie von Otter to octogenarian jazz pianist Marian McPartland. As for the Roots, there's a reason one online biography of their drummer/producer [[Questlove|Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson]] opens with the adjective "ubiquitous". It sometimes seems like the only way an artist with a even passing interest in vintage soul can guarantee their album won't feature a guest appearance from him is by turning all the lights in the studio off, lying on the floor and pretending to be out when he turns up, perhaps after piling furniture against the door as an extra precaution. In the last few years alone, he's appeared on records by John Mayer, John Legend, Betty Wright, Al Green, Joss Stone, Duffy, Amy Winehouse, Dido, Corinne Bailey Rae, Joe Jackson, Al Jarreau, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Mark Ronson. | Both Elvis Costello and [[the Roots]] are what you might call serial collaborators. At an age when a lot of artists sink into comforting nostalgia — making albums that wilfully evoke the albums that made them famous in the first place — Costello seems instead to have embarked on a quest to find new partners to spark his muse: from Burt Bacharach to Allen Toussaint to Swedish mezzo-soprano Annie Sofie von Otter to octogenarian jazz pianist Marian McPartland. As for the Roots, there's a reason one online biography of their drummer/producer [[Questlove|Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson]] opens with the adjective "ubiquitous". It sometimes seems like the only way an artist with a even passing interest in vintage soul can guarantee their album won't feature a guest appearance from him is by turning all the lights in the studio off, lying on the floor and pretending to be out when he turns up, perhaps after piling furniture against the door as an extra precaution. In the last few years alone, he's appeared on records by John Mayer, John Legend, Betty Wright, Al Green, Joss Stone, Duffy, Amy Winehouse, Dido, Corinne Bailey Rae, Joe Jackson, Al Jarreau, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Mark Ronson. | ||
Line 17: | Line 19: | ||
That Costello's lyrical approach automatically invites comparison with the past is occasionally the album's undoing. "[[Stick Out Your Tongue]]" is a languid retooling of 1983's "[[Pills And Soap|Pills and Soap]]," perhaps the most cryptic of his livid Thatcher-era state of the nation addresses: it's hard to get around the fact that the new version doesn't have the same menacing drama as the original, which is unfortunate, given that the overall message of the song appears to be that nothing has really changed in the intervening 30 years. But more often it works to considerable effect. The album's sound is frugal and full of space, but doesn't feel airy so much as eerie. There's a queasy, drugged feeling about the music on ''Wake Up Ghost'' that fits both the fragmentary lyrics and at least one of their themes. Costello has always been good at conjuring up a sense of imminent apocalypse — from 1986's "[[Tokyo Storm Warning]]" to ''The River in Reverse'''s "[[Broken Promise Land]]" — but here the chaos appears to happening at a remove from the songs' narrator. Costello frequently sounds like a man experiencing the unreal sensation of watching tumultuous events unfold on TV, aware that however distantly they're happening, they'll ultimately directly affect him. ''"Just because I don't speak the language doesn't mean I'm blind to the threat,"'' he sings on "[[Tripwire]]," to a Southern soul backing drifting languorously along behind a layer of distortion, ''"But I thought there was more to forgiveness than we conveniently forget."'' The title track is more densely packed with sound — woozy, spiralling orchestral samples, guitars feeding back — but the effect is the same, dreamlike and troubled, heightened by the way Costello sings in a kind of torpid murmur. He might sound half-asleep, but, for a man who announced five years ago that he couldn't really be bothered making any more albums, Elvis Costello seems as animated as ever. | That Costello's lyrical approach automatically invites comparison with the past is occasionally the album's undoing. "[[Stick Out Your Tongue]]" is a languid retooling of 1983's "[[Pills And Soap|Pills and Soap]]," perhaps the most cryptic of his livid Thatcher-era state of the nation addresses: it's hard to get around the fact that the new version doesn't have the same menacing drama as the original, which is unfortunate, given that the overall message of the song appears to be that nothing has really changed in the intervening 30 years. But more often it works to considerable effect. The album's sound is frugal and full of space, but doesn't feel airy so much as eerie. There's a queasy, drugged feeling about the music on ''Wake Up Ghost'' that fits both the fragmentary lyrics and at least one of their themes. Costello has always been good at conjuring up a sense of imminent apocalypse — from 1986's "[[Tokyo Storm Warning]]" to ''The River in Reverse'''s "[[Broken Promise Land]]" — but here the chaos appears to happening at a remove from the songs' narrator. Costello frequently sounds like a man experiencing the unreal sensation of watching tumultuous events unfold on TV, aware that however distantly they're happening, they'll ultimately directly affect him. ''"Just because I don't speak the language doesn't mean I'm blind to the threat,"'' he sings on "[[Tripwire]]," to a Southern soul backing drifting languorously along behind a layer of distortion, ''"But I thought there was more to forgiveness than we conveniently forget."'' The title track is more densely packed with sound — woozy, spiralling orchestral samples, guitars feeding back — but the effect is the same, dreamlike and troubled, heightened by the way Costello sings in a kind of torpid murmur. He might sound half-asleep, but, for a man who announced five years ago that he couldn't really be bothered making any more albums, Elvis Costello seems as animated as ever. | ||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
{{Bibliography notes header}} | {{Bibliography notes header}} | ||
Line 40: | Line 44: | ||
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian Wikipedia: The Guardian] | *[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian Wikipedia: The Guardian] | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guardian 2013-09-12}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:London Guardian 2013-09-12}} | ||
[[Category:Bibliography]] | [[Category:Bibliography]] | ||
[[Category:Bibliography 2013]] | [[Category:Bibliography 2013]] | ||
[[Category: | [[Category:London Guardian| London Guardian 2013-09-12]] | ||
[[Category:Newspaper articles]] | [[Category:Newspaper articles]] | ||
[[Category:Album reviews]] | [[Category:Album reviews]] | ||
[[Category:Wise Up Ghost reviews]] | [[Category:Wise Up Ghost reviews]] |
Revision as of 22:31, 25 February 2016
|