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In the wide world of pop 1996, Elvis Costello has problems. Two spleen-spattered decades on from his My Aim Is True emergence he drags such a weight of oeuvre behind him that unless he grows a mohican and records with Steve Albini, he's only going to command the attention of those who already kneel at the McManus altar.
Costello is a logo. And unless you're already firmly tucked up in bed with your Buddy Hollys Superglued on, it's unlikely to signify much beyond that. Oh yes, another Elvis Costello album. That'll be linguistic chicanery, bitter-sweet sentiments, the neurotic piano flourish and the straining Jerry Lewis vocal snipe.
So, is ...Useless Beauty the album to address the barbed bard's niche imprisonment? Well, it's not '94's Brutal Youth wherein, reconnected with The Attractions, he kicked angsty sonic arse. Nor is it the highbrow-raising, black-tie and tails job, 1993 The Juliet Letters. Rather, it is pick 'n' mix Elvis. A strange, slightly confusing, but mostly gripping channel-hopping session through the accumulated tricks of a show-off songcraftsman.
The fact that you get full-on yee-hah! country 'n' western on the same side as a slice of introspective woodwind wallowing may exasperate, but Costello has mitigating circumstances. More than half the compositions (precisely the right term for, such studied, knottily crafted pieces) were written for someone else and a few are 50-50 collaborations.
...Useless Beauty is therefore a kind of stylists' catalogue, in which Elvis plays Whose Tune Is It Anyway?, impersonating himself, as if he were writing with Paul McCartney, in the style of Tom Waits, or something.
The results are often fascinating, here and there, highly moving and, on occasion, just simple fun. "Shallow Grave," which was written with McCartney, would be the latter, sounding as it does like a kind of literary circle Cramps.
However, "Complicated Shadows," which was written for Johnny Cash but never recorded, is none of the above, linking up a kind of mock Dylan tale of foolish bravado to some dusty electric guitar rocking out, and as a result, sounding like something Dave Stewart stepped in.
So, curios and cheese baubles sit next to pure gems. The title track is an aching stunner of a ballad on a par with "Shipbuilding." Written for folk heroine June Tabor, it rises from a pool of glassy piano quietude into a swoon-inducing chorus, squeezing out a multiplicity of mixed emotions along the way with its storyline of a
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