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It wouldn't be accurate to call Elvis Costello a changed man but there have been changes.
Big, significant changes.
There is a new album, North, on a new label, Deutsche Grammophon, which is known as a classical label.
There are new managers, Vancouver-based Stephen Macklam and Sam Feldman.
Most significant of all, there is a new marriage, his third, to Nanaimo's Diana Krall. After seeing each other for two years, they were wed last December. Inevitably, Krall (also managed by Macklam and Feldman) collaborated with Costello on six songs that are on her The Girl in the Other Room album, due next month.
Otherwise, Costello is as thoughtful as ever. He is articulate, a ready talker and his willingness to take on new challenges knows no bounds. In addition to writing the songs for Krall, he is preparing to record another album and Il Sogno, his first full-length orchestral work, debuts this summer in New York. No change there, then. Costello continues to be prolific and, in a quiet way, provocative.
Tonight, Elvis Costello and his long time pianist, Steve Nieve, are at the Vogue Theatre. The two of them make a flexible duo able to venture into any phase of Costello's varied songwriting career. Friday, he appeared with Krall and Elton John at a sold-out fundraiser for cancer research at the Hotel Vancouver. Last Sunday, he and Alison Krauss performed his and T Bone Burnett's Oscar-nominated song, "The Scarlet Tide," at the Oscar Awards show. At 49-years-old, the man born Declan MacManus has come a long way from being 1977's face of the angry new wave.
"It is a party and you get to wear a nice frock," Costello summarizes the Oscars. He accepts with a rueful chuckle that the awards, in the end, are a TV show, and that a TV show is about marketing and keeping everything moving along quickly, soullessly.
Costello has written and recorded with Burnett before. Among other things, they put out a single as The Coward Brothers. It was one of his first collaborations. Costello has since worked with Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and, of course, Krall.
"You've got to adjust to everybody you collaborate with," he says. "With songs that you are writing for other people to sing you have to consider what they could sing. What is the key that suits them.
"With every single individual you have to change your methodology. It's quite subtle and you absorb things. With Diana, I listened to her ideas. The songs are her story.
"I don't want to get too into it. She can tell you more about it. I'm very proud of my contribution.
"Before we were together, I was hoping she would record one of my songs. So much more happened that I didn't dream of.
"She recorded 'Almost Blue.' It's one of my older songs. Now I think her version of 'Almost Blue' is the definitive one."
By the time it was out, North was interpreted as an album about the Costello-Krall relationship. It isn't as simple as that. There is a jazz element that points to Krall's jazz association but there also is a classical flavour to the minimal but elegant backing. The songs themselves allude to a crumbling relationship as either side withdraws. Costello prefers to stick-handle around the subject matter of North, concluding the CD "speaks with only one meaning," to be had from its songs but it does end optimistically with "I'm in the Mood Again."
"On a personal level, It's been very profound," he says of the past year and more. "It's been very hard, extremely painful, but latterly its been profoundly joyful.
"Some of the musical idiom could have been made by the person who made This Year's Model (Costello's second album, from 1978), but personal issues influenced North. The arranging skills had to be learned, of course. I could have written more but I didn't want to. I could have used more chords or I could have used different keys..."
Costello pulled himself out of the pub circuit and into the punk milieu in 1977. Although his first album, My Aim Is True, had its many conventional rock 'n' roll moments, it was cranky enough to qualify him as a leader of a new breed and he was often vilified as "Prince Charmless." He never wrote down to his audience, which meant his songs never reached a low common denominator. When Costello looks back now, there is no song that embarrasses him.
"I'm lucky that I never wrote a 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.' Whatever I've written, it's come from an older head in a way."
He did exhibit eclectic, esoteric taste, though. He did an album of country, another of covers, teamed up with the Brodsky Quartet to record The Juliet Letters, over a weekend wrote all the songs for Transvision Vamp's Now Ain't the Time For Your Tears, made albums with or for Burt Bacharach, Anne Sofie von Otter, Bill Frisell. He wrote for soundtracks, produced and acted, appearing as an inept magician in No Surrender, stereotyping himself in Frasier, taking David Letterman's place for a night in Letterman's talk show.
"Nothing is self-conscious," Costello says. "My curiosity is leading me here or there. There is a suspicion that I do it out of vanity. Nothing could be further from the truth. It all comes out of one head. It sounds selfish, but I do it for myself. That's why any artist does it."
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