London Times, January 7, 2022: Difference between revisions
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<center><h3> Elvis returns to his raucous, rattling roots </h3></center> | |||
<center><h3>Elvis | |||
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<center> Will Hodgkinson </center> | <center> Will Hodgkinson </center> | ||
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'''Pub rock meets new wave in this trip to the sound of Costello's youth, says Will Hodgkinson | |||
'''Elvis Costello & the Imposters <br> | |||
The Boy Named If <br> | |||
{{4of5stars}} | {{4of5stars}} | ||
{{Bibliography text}} | {{Bibliography text}} | ||
Most of us find growing up difficult, but it must be particularly hard for rock stars. Becoming an adult generally involves realising | Most of us find growing up difficult, but it must be particularly hard for rock stars. Becoming an adult generally involves realising that the world does not revolve around you, but when you're a rock star the world does revolve around you, a small world at least, with audiences, backing musicians and road crew all there because you are. No wonder so many of them are such big babies. | ||
Now Elvis Costello has addressed the situation with an album that | Now Elvis Costello has addressed the situation with an album that "takes us from the last days of a bewildered childhood to that mortifying moment when you are told to stop acting like a child, which for most men (and a few gals) can be any time in the next 50 years." It's a surprise nobody has done it sooner. Whatever Costello's other childlike tendencies, he does have the work ethic of a proper adult. Since ''Hey Clockface'' in 2000, which indulged his love of Seventies singer-songwriters with reflective songs about the nature of time, he has made a French-language version of the album called ''La Face de Pendule d Coucou'' then a Spanish-language version of his 1978 breakthrough, ''This Year's Model''. | ||
Now comes an album that, fittingly for its subject matter, returns to the raucous, rattling sound of Costello's early years in the late Seventies, where the rootsy traditionalism of pub rock met the spikiness of new wave and the raw thrill of the Sixties beat boom. | |||
The result is songs such as "Penelope Halfpenny," driven by Steve Nieve's swirling Vox Continental organ and not a million miles away from Costello's unimpeachable classic "Pump It Up"; and "Farewell, OK," whose primeval drums and riotous riffs sound like something the Beatles might have screamed out in Hamburg's Star Club circa 1962. | |||
The | The fact that the Beatles were barely out of their teens then and Costello is 67 pretty much proves his point about the challenge of growing up. | ||
The | ''The Boy Named If'' is based on the idea of having an imaginary friend, Costello says, "The one you blame for the hearts you break, including your own." The title track is written from the perspective of this figment of the juvenile mind, threatening to disappear if you step on a crack in the pavement and promising to take you to "magic lantern land" if you keep believing in him. | ||
Costello is grappling with the value of romantic thinking versus the realities of ageing, from the elderly couple dealing with bereavement on the country-soul ballad "Paint the Red Rose Blue" to the waitress dreaming of stardom — and getting a rude awakening — on the sophisticated "My Most Beautiful Mistake." | |||
Costello | Costello has always weighed up nostalgia against realism. Even when he first emerged in the late Seventies as the bespectacled intellectual of punk, he was trying to bottle the lightning of the rock 'n' roll that excited him as a kid in the Sixties. All these years later, he is still trying to do it. With its irrepressible, rambunctious spirit, ''The Boy Named If'' is a fine argument for the benefits of staying forever young. | ||
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{{tags}}[[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[ | {{tags}}[[The Boy Named If]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Farewell, OK]] {{-}} [[Penelope Halfpenny]] {{-}} [[The Boy Named If (song)]] {{-}} [[Paint The Red Rose Blue]] {{-}} [[My Most Beautiful Mistake]] {{-}} [[Hey Clockface]] {{-}} [[La Face de Pendule à Coucou]] {{-}} [[This Year's Model]] {{-}} [[Spanish Model]] {{-}} [[Pump It Up]] {{-}} [[The Beatles]] | ||
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[[image:2022-01-07 | [[image:2022-01-07 London Times page xx.jpg|380px]] | ||
<small>< | <br><small>Page scan.</small> | ||
<small>Photo by [[Mark Seliger]].</small><br> | |||
[[image:2022-01-07 London Times photo 01 ms.jpg|380px]] | |||
{{Bibliography notes footer}} | {{Bibliography notes footer}} | ||
Latest revision as of 00:25, 21 February 2022
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