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Don't look now, but Elvis Costello is offering a preview of Look Now, his first album in five years.
Two songs from the 12-track reunion with the Imposters are streaming now and can be downloaded with Look Now pre-orders: "Under Lime" and "Unwanted Number," which has lived up to its title over the years. Costello wrote it for the 1996 movie Grace of My Heart, but has never before included it on an album.
Look Now, available October 12, will also be released in a 16-track deluxe edition.
Details of the new album come less than a month after Costello, who turns 64 on August 25, abruptly cancelled the tail end of his European tour to recuperate from cancer surgery. He offered no update on his health with today's announcement, but pointed out that a U.S. tour will proceed as scheduled this fall.
Among the new album's anticipated highlights: a 1997 song co-written with Carole King, "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter," which has popped up occasionally on Costello's concert set lists since 1999.
Costello also collaborated on three songs with Burt Bacharach, the legendary composer who recently celebrated his 90th birthday and plays piano on two tracks with the Imposters.
Costello and Bacharach previously worked together on the critically acclaimed 1998 album Painted from Memory, which featured the ballad "I Still Have That Girl," winner of the 1999 Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.
In a statement, Costello said Look Now is reminiscent of his previous work with Bacharach and his popular 1982 album with the Attractions, Imperial Bedroom.
"I knew if we could make an album with the scope of Imperial Bedroom and some and the beauty and emotion of Painted From Memory, we would really have something," Costello said.
Look Now is Costello's first album since Wise Up Ghost, a 2013 joint effort with the Roots, the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He released the solo album National Ransom in 2010, two years after his last record with the Imposters, Momofuku.
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