Elvis Costello has just published North, an intimate and confessional (like in the Catholic sense: confess) record.
The British musician plays 11 songs, accompanied by a piano and a string and horns orchestra.
On first approach, it seems that Elvis Costello recorded his new work in "slow-motion." The songs in North resemble a nineteenth century lieder collection.
"Most of these songs are very, very slow (quiet?,"says the British musician, who is now on tour throughout Europe, "I know many people have difficulties in understanding this recording"
The album is a 45 minute travel from deep sadness to promising/new born hope, in reference to his separation from his (former) wife for the last 16 years and his new love, Diana Krall, the jazz singer.
"Let me tell you about her,..." sings Elvis Costello in one of the verses of "Let me tell you about her," which is one of the pieces North is comprised of. It may be the most sincere record of an author that, since his eruption in the musical scene heading the British New Wave in the late seventies, has never given up surprising his followers with innumerable musical roundabouts, always brilliant ones, travelling through the most diverse span of genres in pop.
For this time, he keeps the guitar out of the scene (just twelve bars) and in comes the piano of Steve Nieve for narrating the transit from the shadows to the lights of love. The Brodsky Quartet and a big string and horns orchestra (the alto sax of Lee Konitz deserves to be pointed out) add solemnity and dramatism to Costello's compositions, which are fragile and urgent, composed in just two months time.
"I believe you always have to be proud of the result of your work, but this time it has been the climax of the work being carried out for the last eight years. The sound we have accomplished, with the voice and the piano in the foreground and the orchestra in the background, is just what I wanted to do," says the musician.
Costello, 48 years old, with his new work, breaks all the rules of the greatest hits and demands that the listener put some effort. The tunes reveal its details and inner dynamics with great difficulty for ears accustomed to clear rythms.
The musician takes for granted that not everyone will have the patience to enjoy this trip till its ending. "It is always frustrating when people do not give music the chance to speak for itself. But I can understand that. We live in a world that is just too fast (demanding?)"
When he is asked if he feels worried about how his fans are going to respond to this difficult new album, he answers in a grave voice: "I have no fans." In a carreer spaning over 25 years, Costello has trespassed every frontier between musical styles, mixing punk, rock, folk, jazz and classic music, surprising and challenging his listeners again and again.
The quiet North follows When I Was Cruel, his previous year's record, in which Costello got close to rock once again. The new songs where written during the noisy tour of the previous record, mainly by night, sitting alone at the piano. The songs really asked for that, explains Costello. "I do not think it would have been better to do them more dynamic, noisy or uptempo"
In this way, they contain musical elements from the decade of the 40's of the 20th century and the 30's of the 19th century. "I listened to a great number of German composers from the 19th century, learning how to create a lieder collection."
The main subject of the record is the end of a relation and the beginning of a new one, just like what happened in Costello's real life after his painful separation of singer Cait O'Riordan. "It is a trip from the shadows to the light" he says, making clear that the autobiographic aspects are limited to the emotions. "It is not my diary," he says, "Every song is personal. My life is changing in the emotional aspect and everything I tell in the record is true, but I do not want to sing what happened to me from an egotistic point of view"
Later on, the Liverpool-born musician talks about the music in the record. "In spite of all those melodies and harmonies, with a lot of work and intensity in them, I just wanted to write songs that could be understood by everyone, that everyone could relate to them, and that could work not only on the record but also on the stage, something that is very difficult. The audience, while listening to the record, just can not see your lips, your eyes, the way you move... I believe that the orchestra, in this sense, cradles you and fills the music with gestures"
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