Mojo, November 2020: Difference between revisions
m (resize images) |
(add more transcribed text and tags) |
||
| Line 21: | Line 21: | ||
The new album's contrasting styles weren't "perversity" or "hubris" on his part. "I mean there isn't one true church from which I stray, let's make that clear," he says, prickling a little. "For me every one of those things is a whole-hearted thing, not detours - other than the [2015-2017] tour I called Detour as a satire on the idea. It starts from the place of I make the record I'm making, not the record I'm not making. Because I ''can'' make the other record. Maybe," he muses, "once you make one thing one way, it frees you a little bit. It makes the surprise of noise and rhythm into something you want to jump into again. That last record, I had everything worked out. This record is the opposite." | The new album's contrasting styles weren't "perversity" or "hubris" on his part. "I mean there isn't one true church from which I stray, let's make that clear," he says, prickling a little. "For me every one of those things is a whole-hearted thing, not detours - other than the [2015-2017] tour I called Detour as a satire on the idea. It starts from the place of I make the record I'm making, not the record I'm not making. Because I ''can'' make the other record. Maybe," he muses, "once you make one thing one way, it frees you a little bit. It makes the surprise of noise and rhythm into something you want to jump into again. That last record, I had everything worked out. This record is the opposite." | ||
Something else he finds freeing is “travelling to a new location where nobody knows me. The sense of adventure. “It was February 2020. You could still fly. So he got on a plane to Helsinki. “I’m not as well-known there. I’ve only been there twice in 40 years. But I found this little studio and it was the jolt I was looking for.” | |||
Suomenlinnan Studio is tucked away in an 15th century fort built to keep the Russians out. You reach it by ferry from mainland Helsinki. “A great way to start the day,” recommends Costello. “Walk down the main drag in Helsinki, go up to the top deck to get a lungful of bracing air, then work for eight hours.” | |||
Alone bar the engineer, Eetü Seppälä, he spent three days recording three songs. “I went there to record as much music as I could, but when you’re playing all the instruments it slows you down a little bit.” Because Costello doesn’t play drums he sang the kick part into his phone and Seppälä’s team turned it into a sample. Then Costello sang over it, playing piano or guitar. “The Helsinki Sound,” he dubbed it. | |||
All three of the songs he recorded there have been streaming well, ahead of the release of their parent album – the bitter No Flag the longest, since June. “They are to some degree commentary rather than emotional,” says Costello. “They’re not love songs, are they, any of them? Even in the three days there were three different moods. No Flag has a degree of anger; Hetty O’Hara Confidential is kind of humorous, and We’re All Cowards Now is more melancholic.” | |||
There was a report in a Helsinki paper saying that Costello had gone there to make a protest song. “There might be something lost in translation,” Costello says. “People want to see No Flag as a protest song, but I didn’t see it like that. You’re writing and it’s like what does it feel like when you get to the end of your tolerance? What does that place look and feel like? I guess that’s what No Flag is. But I don’t send out pamphlets telling people what my songs are about and how you should feel when you listen.” | |||
From Helsinki, Costello flew to Paris. “I went to celebrate Steve Nieve’s birthday and him getting his passport – he’s a Frenchman now, dual citizenship.” The Attractions/Imposters keysman had booked a quartet of classical musicians into Les Studios Saint Germain for the weekend. | |||
“Steve had transcribed the songs in chord charts” says Costello. “Classical players always tend to want a sheet of dots in front of them, but these musicians were very open-minded, cross-the borderlines.” And in the end, much of the music was organised on the hoof, with Costello singing live. | |||
The plan was to finish the album in New York, but first there was a UK tour. It found Costello in high spirits. “It opened really spectacularly at the Liverpool Olympia,” he says. “My mother came to the show. They had her on a platform where she sat in a wheelchair. It was so emotional, because she had danced in that ballroom as a girl in the mid ‘40s after the Second World War. | |||
“It was a beautiful way to start, and then the final show in [[Concert 2020-03-13 London|Hammersmith]]…” he’s momentarily lost for words. “If that were the last time I was ever on-stage, it wouldn’t have been a bad show to end on. That tour we did in England before all tours had to stop, was, I felt, the first time that we had been ''heard'' in 10 years. “ | |||
Meaning? | |||
“I felt that the audience was hearing who we actually were, not who they imagined us to be. They didn’t seem impatient, if I sometimes played piano. We got to show them things that only the American audiences had seen. We had backdrops for the whole show instead of having just a bank of lights. “I just felt,” he pauses, “as if we were all on level ground for the first time in years in the homeland. And it felt good. I really felt good on that tour.” | |||
And then the world went into lockdown. Costello flew to Canada, and ''Hey Clockface'' was completed, like everything else post-Covid, digitally and long-distance. Two late additions, Radio Is Everything and Newspaper Pane – the first a ''noir'' poem, the second equal parts cool and urgent, almost Dylanesque – are collaborations with guitarist Bill Frisell and trumpet/flugelhorn player Michael Leonhart. Hearing the contributions of the latter, it’s hard not to be reminded of Chet Baker’s 1983 work on Costello’s Shipbuilding. Had Costello made that connection too? | |||
“That would be a very good connection,” he says. “Chet coming in and playing on that record was to make it distinct from Robert [Wyatt]’s original [1982 single] version. I had this idea of a trumpet. I couldn’t believe we got Chet Baker and how beautifully he played. But I wasn’t thinking of echoing that however much I love it. I love the flugelhorn. It has a slightly rounder, more mellow tone.” | |||
While some artists of his generation grumble about the process of recording in 2020 – flinging sound files around the world, with parts and mixes flying back, there’s only going to be more of it post-Covid. So Costello is minded to embrace the digital connectivity. It allows even more opportunities to collaborate and work. | |||
{{rttc}} | {{rttc}} | ||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
{{tags}}[[Diana Krall]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[The Band]] {{-}} [[Rick Danko]] {{-}} [[Budd Schulberg]] {{-}} [[A Face In The Crowd]] {{-}} [[Tommy McLain]] {{-}} [[Sweet Dreams]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Hey Clockface]] {{-}} [[Look Now]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[John Legend]] {{-}} [[Detour]] {{-}} | {{tags}}[[Diana Krall]] {{-}} [[Steve Nieve]] {{-}} [[Armed Forces]] {{-}} [[Shipbuilding]] {{-}} [[The Band]] {{-}} [[Rick Danko]] {{-}} [[Budd Schulberg]] {{-}} [[A Face In The Crowd]] {{-}} [[Tommy McLain]] {{-}} [[Sweet Dreams]] {{-}} [[Almost Blue]] {{-}} [[Hey Clockface]] {{-}} [[Look Now]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Burt Bacharach]] {{-}} [[Carole King]] {{-}} [[John Legend]] {{-}} [[Detour]] {{-}} [[No Flag]] {{-}} [[Hetty O'Hara Confidential]] {{-}} [[We Are All Cowards Now]] {{-}} [[The Attractions]] {{-}} [[The Imposters]] {{-}} [[Eventim Olympia|Liverpool Olympia]] {{-}} [[Radio Is Everything]] {{-}} [[Newspaper Pane]] {{-}} [[Bob Dylan]] {{-}} [[Bill Frisell]] {{-}} [[Michael Leonhart]] {{-}} [[Chet Baker]] {{-}} [[Robert Wyatt]] {{-}} | ||
{{cx}} | {{cx}} | ||
Revision as of 06:36, 1 November 2020
|
