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Elvis Costello is like your friendly, local mailman because he reliably delivers. Incredibly, the singer-songwriter has done this for more than four decades with a passion and intensity behind the microphone. It's the sort of energy we all need more of in the current times.
FOr 67-year-old Costello, his latest album, The Boy Named If, feels like a visceral journey that captures the beauty and pain of life. It's the sort of rocking thought-provoking listen that can only come with depth of experience.
And perhaps, a pandemic, with its need for a new approach.
"We were more fortunate than many other people [during enforced lockdowns] in that our jobs could be pursued as best we could from where we were [living]," says Costello, exclusively to Reader's Digest from his home in Vancouver, Canada.
Alone with his guitar and outside distractions largely gone, Costello found he was able to write his songs quickly. "The words are dragged out of you by the rhythm of the guitar playing," he explains. "Then you stop and put some little refinements on that so we can turn corners in the songs. Ideas about how to arrange them start to come very easily from that".
Once the songs were 'out', Costello and his band - The Imposters - got on and worked like most of us did during the pandemic, remotely, with surprising results.
"Pete Thomas, our drummer, was saying to me, 'I play every single day, and I'm ready to go whenever we get the call'. And I sent him a song that I was working on and he sent it back with the drums on it. And I thought Wow, that actually sounds like we could be in the room together."
The process continue with each member. Bass player Davey Faragher and keyboardist Steve Nieve added their pieces to the scores. "And before we all knew it we had just made this record - it didn't take long."
Trust and longevity as a group helped make the time just another extraordinary shared experience. "If you have worked with two people on and off for 45 years and the other for 20, then you've seen a fair amount of life together" he says.
"We have shared misfortune, sadness, children growing up, in some cases, grandchildren being born and the departure of parents - all of the things that mark life out."
This familiarity stretches into Costello's songwriting. If he writes a tune with lyrics portraying different times in his life, the others understand the motive and context.
"The music is there to animate those words - take them out into the air, make them vivid."
Although The Boy Named If is his 32nd studio album, Costello's enthusiasm for the process remains infectious. But, you can tell he and The Imposters had fun making it because it rolls with such beautiful energy and swagger. It's a feast for the ears; gritty and bass-driven, accented by cracking drums and keyboard and doused in Costello's unmistakable, still-punchy vocals.
Remaining text and scanner-error corrections to come...
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