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Elvis Costello will release his twenty-fourth album in September. Recorded in three weeks in New York, with Kevin Killen co-producing, the album will be more lavishly arranged than 2002's rock & roll-minded When I Was Cruel.
"Everything happens in the foreground in pop records, trying to knock your eyes out," Costello says. "I wanted to go for sounds that might be twenty feet away from you."
To that end, Costello wrote arrangements that incorporate a nine-piece horn section and a twenty-eight-piece string section. He conducted the strings himself, waving his arms around and trying not to confuse the musicians.
"I don't think the New York Philharmonic is going to call me up," he notes dryly.
Costello wrote most of the songs after last year's Cruel concerts -- still in his sweaty stage clothes, he would play piano for two hours in a white heat of composition.
"I don't know what kind of thing this is," he says of the album's unusual creative process. "I just think it's good."
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