Pitchfork, May 5, 2002: Difference between revisions
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Ahhh, if I only had a Latin Grammy for every time some hot air-bloated rock pundit wrote that Bob Dylan's "still got it," that Bruce Springsteen's late-90s social posturing is any more convincing than his Reagan-era material, that the small army of background singers and synthesizers required to create Brian Wilson's Imagination really sound any fresher than, say, "Kokomo." For the last seven or eight years, Elvis Costello fans have had great reason for concern. | Ahhh, if I only had a Latin Grammy for every time some hot air-bloated rock pundit wrote that Bob Dylan's "still got it," that Bruce Springsteen's late-90s social posturing is any more convincing than his Reagan-era material, that the small army of background singers and synthesizers required to create Brian Wilson's ''Imagination'' really sound any fresher than, say, "Kokomo." For the last seven or eight years, Elvis Costello fans have had great reason for concern. | ||
After a stellar showing with the reunited Attractions on 1994's ''Brutal Youth'', Costello released a trio of disappointing releases. 1996's ''All This Useless Beauty'' barely used the Attractions, wandering in several different directions at once and recycling material originally written for other artists. 1998's Burt Bacharach collaboration ''Painted from Memory'' seemingly aged Costello an extra twenty years, with its preponderance of crooning ballads and arrangements that might as well have been recorded for a Dionne Warwick comeback. And last year's pairing with Anne Sofie von Otter, ''For the Stars'', barely qualified as a Costello release at all, with a predilection for Costello's iffiest material ("Shamed into Love," anyone?) and a pair of Tom Waits' more forgettable castoffs. | After a stellar showing with the reunited Attractions on 1994's ''Brutal Youth'', Costello released a trio of disappointing releases. 1996's ''All This Useless Beauty'' barely used the Attractions, wandering in several different directions at once and recycling material originally written for other artists. 1998's Burt Bacharach collaboration ''Painted from Memory'' seemingly aged Costello an extra twenty years, with its preponderance of crooning ballads and arrangements that might as well have been recorded for a Dionne Warwick comeback. And last year's pairing with Anne Sofie von Otter, ''For the Stars'', barely qualified as a Costello release at all, with a predilection for Costello's iffiest material ("Shamed into Love," anyone?) and a pair of Tom Waits' more forgettable castoffs. |
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