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So why do rock critics love Elvis Costello? Is it really, as David Lee Roth suggested, because they all look like Elvis Costello? (No, actually; as writer George Kalogerakis once noted, they bear more of a resemblance to George Constanza on Seinfeld.) It is that Costello’s mix of penetrating melody and mordant wit makes him the Kurt Weill – if not the R. Crumb – of the post-punk era? Or is it that critics knew what a perversely perfect rock icon could be made of a four-eyed, knock-kneed geek named Elvis? Now, eighteen years after he emerged, Costello himself seems slightly puzzled by such issues. On last year’s Brutal Youth, the 39-year-old artist seemed to be probing the roots of his myth: regrouping with his explosive original band, the Attractions; turning out the sort of pithy, cranked-up rock songs that defined him as the bristling successor to Bob Dylan. (His latest, Kojak Variety, was also a playing holiday; a sometimes fun, sometimes unconvincing run through R&B chestnuts and rockabilly B-sides). Could he, too, be showing signs of nostalgie de la New Wave? Costello has always been something of a shape-shifter, and at his appearance at the Beacon Theatre (August 2-4 (sold out), 6 and 7), the Attractions will abet all his previous incarnations: lit-punk, neo-Gershwin, torch singer, caustic folkie. Just don’t be surprised if there’s more than a touch of the Angry (not so) Young Man. Like rock critics, normal people love it when an icon still rocks.
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