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Post by Fuggle on Oct 10, 2004 18:46:29 GMT -5
The main Attraction
Elvis Costello - Barrowland, Glasgow By Leon McDermott
ELVIS Costello might have been a punk. But he was never Punk. His debut album might have been released in 1977, but it was no year zero for the erstwhile Declan McManus (the Elvis came from, well, Elvis; Costello is his mother’s maiden name). His songs always acknowledged that they owed a debt to everything that punk attempted to deny: musicianship, craft, a sense of place that had a little more permanence than a gob of spit hanging off the mic. And so it is now: Costello, paunchier than the rail-thin youth that appeared on the cover of This Year’s Model (his first album with the Attractions, who are his backing band tonight, playing under the name The Imposters), decked out in a purple jacket, has matured in the same way that John Lydon has descended into childishness. The past quarter-century has seen Costello try everything from country, on 1981’s Almost Blue, to collaborations with the Kronos Quartet, and Burt Bacharach.
This year alone, he has released two albums: a collection of classical pieces, Il Sogno, which offered a measured foil to the raw, and heartfelt collection, The Delivery Man.
His only UK show this year kicks off with a blistering rendition of How To Be Dumb, with Costello almost tearing chunks from the body of his guitar as keyboard player Steve Nieve assaulted his instrument with glee, while drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Bruce Thomas (no relation) are a pummelling, driven rhythm section. And for the next few songs, this pace continues. Costello – tonight, as always – works best when he’s delivering a series of short sharp shocks; when his vocals are spat out with machine-gun pace and the music frantically attempts to keep up.
The title track of The Delivery Man is rendered at a more relaxed pace, its waltzing blues motif wrapped around a Dylanesque story and a lurching, funereal organ, and when Costello gets to the line “In a certain light, he looked like Elvis,” he can’t help but raise a smile. Before the honky-tonk stomp of Monkey To Man, Costello explains that it’s a song bequeathed to us by our simian ancestors – adding that “We should never, on any account, in any country, vote for anyone who is a disgrace to the theory of evolution” – to rapturous applause.
The beautiful, lilting Country Darkness follows, a regretful lament in which his raw baritone is backed with quietly emphatic guitar lines that contain 1000 tears in every note.
There are occasions, however, when Costello seems keen to sacrifice both humour and brevity in favour of lengthy jams which do the songs a disservice. Uncomplicated, from Blood And Chocolate, is sludgy and over-long, its sentiments bogged down in bar-room riffing and pointless handclaps courtesy of the audience. You can feel the song being drained of its energy with every second that passes. It’s a relief when – such as on a rousing I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down, or on the final encore, an electric double whammy of Pump It Up and Oliver’s Army – Costello lets rip, and strains at the collar of his shirt when rasping out a chorus.
Throughout, Costello’s voice is the one constant: a thing of ragged beauty which has weathered the years with admirable lightness; if he sometimes sounded nasal as a youth, he now sounds defiant and just weary enough, like a man who’s seen enough of life to know that there’s more pain than wonder in the world. And that’s after he married jazz diva Diana Krall, who might just be hovering around the sound desk in shades.
A tender run through Shipbuilding is inevitably one of the evening’s highlights, though the song’s resigned conclusion (it was written about the build-up to the Falklands war), “We will be shipbuilding … diving for dear life/When we could be diving for pearls” is marred by an over-talkative crowd.
He might have just turned 50, but Costello still has the fervour of his youthful self. He’s as much of an outsider and a singular proposition as ever, and it’s something we should all be thankful for.
10 October 2004
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 8:11:17 GMT -5
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS *** BARROWLAND, GLASGOW
NO-ONE seemed terribly sure why Elvis Costello decided to play just one date in support of his vibrant new album The Delivery Man, but his Scottish fans were delighted he had selected Barrowland as the location, even if a couple of hundred extra devotees could have been accommodated round the sidelines and at the back of the hall.
The new songs were mostly convincing. Current single Monkey To Man was dispatched with rootsy swagger, Country Darkness was suitably yearning, and Either Side Of The Same Town was simply as great as anything Costello has performed in his career. Yet, something was missing - that extra push for the brilliance you know he is capable of.
He made a judicious selection of old and new, and returned for an extended first encore, beautifully partnering newbie Nothing Clings Like Ivy with Good Year For The Roses. Interestingly, he favoured tracks from debut album My Aim Is True on this outing - a sign that he and his Imposters (featuring two former Attractions) were feeling youthfully virile.
However, indulgences staggered in and came close to derailing the latter stages of the concert. Shipbuilding pulled the set back from the brink, but it tottered again, until the final salvo of Oliver’s Army, (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding? and Pump It Up provided a belated reminder what he can achieve.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 8:13:18 GMT -5
Elvis Costello, Barrowland, Glasgow KEITH BRUCE October 08 2004 HE was, predictably, still playing – Oliver's Army leading into Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love & Understanding – when I had to trot down the stairs. In as many ways as Costello's unique UK "Delivery Man" gig to promote his new album was as predictable as it was special. Sufficient selections from the new album were there to justify the concert, but the presence of Country Darkness (a stand out), Needle Time (the staged climax), Delivery Man (too early in the set) and Button My Lip (too late), failed to achieve the balance. Bridget McConnell could have faulted the attempt at inclusiveness however. If the guy who has been shouting for Leon Payne's Psycho at every Costello gig since 1980 was there tonight, he heard it. Fans of My Aim Is True got Blame It On Cain and (The Angels Want To Wear My) Red Shoes. Shipbuilding, High Fidelity, Radio Radio, Good Year For The Roses, and I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down were all present and pretty much correct. What it looked like was the faux cabaret of the Trust tour, back when irony was still in fashion. What it sounded like, as we ricocheted around the prodigious catalogue of the prolific EC, was much less knowing and bit more haphazard. Costello led very much from the front, Steve Naive's keyboards were applauded whenever they had the prominence we yearned for, drummer Pete Thomas was uncharacteristically subdued and bassist Davey Farragher is a fine backing vocalist. There were great moments and I wouldn't have been anywhere else. But this treat was just a bit flat.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 8:16:06 GMT -5
ELVIS COSTELLO
Album Title: The Delivery Man Producer(s): Dennis Herring, Elvis Costello Genre: POP Label/Catalog Number: Lost Highway 0002593 Release Date: Sept. 21 Source: Billboard Magazine Originally Reviewed: October 09, 2004
In chasing his muse, Elvis Costello has gone down many a genre road. Despite occasional misses, these varied excursions have proved interesting, if not classic additions to his canon. "The Delivery Man"—the yin to the yang of the simultaneously released classical work "Il Sogno"—proves he can, nearly 30 years into his career, explore roots rock with rewarding results. Despite lacking a promised cohesive narrative thread, this Southern-drenched song cycle has plenty of merit. Its loose arrangements and inspired execution recall past album-length tangents: There's cacophonous avant-garde ("Button My Lip"), gritty roadhouse ("There's a Story in Your Voice" with Lucinda Williams), Nashville legacy ("Country Darkness"), yelping punk blues ("Bedlam"), a dark and spooky character study (the title track) and heartbreak balladry ("Heart Shaped Bruise" with Emmylou Harris). Welcome, worthy and wonderful.
—BAJ
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 8:18:31 GMT -5
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS
"The Delivery Man''
Lost Highway
****
Mixing soul, country and rock 'n' roll with a fragmented narrative about a man named Abel (a.k.a. the Delivery Man) and his impact on the lives of three women, Costello has fashioned a raw-boned, emotional set of songs with the help of his superb band and a few guests.
Longtime sidemen Steve Nieve (keyboards) and Pete Thomas (drums) and more recent recruit Davey Faragher (bass) pummel their way through the noisy album opener ``Button My Lip.''
Then they ease up on the weepy ballads ``Country Darkness'' and ``Either Side of the Same Town.'' Lucinda Williams plays the role of bad-girl divorcee Vivien on ``There's a Story In Your Voice,'' and Emmylou Harris portrays Vivien's best friend Geraldine, a pious war widow, on ``Heart Shaped Bruise.''
Costello deliberately left out huge chunks of narrative in order to let the songs stand on their own and to avoid the dreaded ``concept album'' tag.
The ferocious rocker ``Bedlam'' and New Orleans-flavored ``Monkey to Man'' don't advance any story lines. But who cares? -- they're simply fantastic.
-- Martin Bandyke
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 8:28:09 GMT -5
Elvis Costello
The Rolling Stone Interview
By David Fricke
Elvis Costello is literally as old as rock & roll itself. The British singer-songwriter, whose real name is Declan Patrick MacManus, was born in London on August 25th, 1954, seven weeks after the real Elvis made his first Sun single on the other side of the Atlantic. But in three decades of making his own records and composing some of the most melodically and lyrically accomplished songs in rock, Costello can proudly say he has never written about being a rock star. "I just am rock & roll," he says with a grin on a recent morning in a Manhattan hotel room. "I don't have to protest that hard. A lot of rock & rollers are afraid to do things because they won't look good doing it: 'A rocker wouldn't do that.' I'll put on a suit if I feel like it. It's not about the clothes. It's about here," pointing to his head.
Costello is, in fact, wearing a suit. He also looks very much as he did, if not as rail-thin, when My Aim Is True, his 1977 debut on Britain's Stiff label, announced the arrival of the most original voice of the punk era. Costello aspired to more than that, however. His discography is a staggering library of confidence and daring: his '78-'84 rush of classics with his great band the Attractions; genre adventures ranging from 1981's all-country experiment, Almost Blue, to last year's ravishing, confessional suite, North; songs and albums made with artists as diverse as Burt Bacharach, Johnny Cash and No Doubt. In October, Costello releases two very different albums on the same day: the visceral Southern-gothic opera The Delivery Man, cut with his current band the Imposters over a single weekend in Mississippi; and his symphonic bow, Il Sogno, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and originally written by Costello as a ballet score.
"It's the same person, the same voice," Costello says of the new albums, humming a soprano-sax figure from Il Sogno as melodic evidence. "I think you can recognize that, if you have the ears for it." His refusal to acknowledge limits or deny his impulses is a recurring theme in this interview. In more than six hours of conversation in July, the week after his three triumphant birthday concerts at New York's Lincoln Center, Costello plunges into a wide range of topics. He speaks frankly, again, of the only blot on his career: the 1979 bar brawl in Columbus, Ohio, in which he drunkenly and regrettably defamed Ray Charles with a racial epithet. He talks at greater length, with candor and color, of his early, turbulent stardom; his musical upbringing; the emotions and methods inside his songs; and his recent collaboration with his new wife, jazz singer-pianist Diana Krall, on her album The Girl in the Other Room.
"It's a provocation to the imagination," Costello says, at one point, of the sound and structure of The Delivery Man - a perfect description of his entire life in music.
You have recorded and performed in virtually every pop-music style, as well as opera and now symphonic music. Don't you ever feel like you've gone too far, that you're dabbling where you don't belong?
[Smiles] Does it sound arrogant to say no? I don't take on things I can't do. I've been very fortunate. I'm not pinned to one time by mass success. In England, I'm known as a late-Seventies artist. Everything I released went into the charts. In America, my commercial success was from 1982 to 1991. That's when I had my hits, for lack of a better word.
I walked away from it. I didn't want to be bigger and bigger. And it's worked out. Once in a while I'll have a hit - a freak like "She" [his cover of a Charles Aznavour song, on the 1999 Notting Hill soundtrack]. That pays the rent and frees me to do stuff that I want to do.
You can go to these extremes, with major-label backing, at a time when many artists in your peer and age group cannot. They can barely hold on to record deals.
They're not trying to do this. Maybe it doesn't appeal to them. It does appeal to me. Going to Nashville to make Almost Blue was about affection and curiosity. I didn't think for a moment what it meant for my career. I didn't think what it meant to engage [former Beatles engineer] Geoff Emerick to make Imperial Bedroom, with those big orchestrations. It was a money-is-no-object exercise.
I hired the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to do a concert in 1982 at the Royal Albert Hall [in London]. They said, "It's this amount of money for sixty people." I said, "How much for eighty?" I didn't know what I was doing. It's like I was buying carrots. Everything was done from the back of record sleeves. "Who's going to arrange?" I got Robert Kirby, who did those fantastic Nick Drake records, which are so beautiful and small.
Are you a man of impulse?
I'm terrifically impulsive, but I see things through. I'm very patient. Maybe I have a misplaced belief in my own immortality. I believe I can wait out any fashion. I waited out the whole Eighties. Those fuckers all went away eventually, with their stupid haircuts and synthesizers.
Many fans, regardless of how much they admire your new work, would probably say the early records are still your best.
I have no problem singing those songs. I can find a point of view in them. I wouldn't sing anything for nostalgic reasons. I am the least nostalgic person you will ever meet. And I have no concern for posterity. I believe when you're gone, you're gone.
You have no interest in the legacy you'll leave behind?
No. The only reason I would is if there is anybody here I want to take care of, who would earn some money from it. In terms of reputation, who cares? I won't be here.
If you're not worried about posterity, who are you making records for - especially albums as different as "Il Sogno" and "The Delivery Man"?
Anyone who will listen. When I was a teenager, I didn't just listen to rock. I remember being smitten with some girl and listening to the Supremes and Temptations doing "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me." But I also liked [singer-songwriter] David Ackles. He didn't sound like a kid. He sounded grown-up - there was Percy Mayfield and Kurt Weill in there.
I was born, coincidentally, when rock & roll started. But my imagination about music doesn't start in 1954. I'm not exclusively thinking about rock & roll. When I made My Aim Is True, my favorite record was Randy Newman's first album. Punk was supposed to be the Year Zero. I didn't buy it: "We're sweeping it all away." When the Clash ran out of the motor of those first two albums, what was the next thing they did? London Calling. You have New Orleans music and ska. The Joe Strummer record collection came into view.
Were you more honest in displaying your roots than the punks around you?
I had a different sense of memory. My first album had things related to the Modern Lovers and the Velvet Underground. But "Waiting for the End of the World" has pedal steel guitar. Other songs have rhythms from Motown and the Band.
"The Delivery Man" is the most American record you have ever made, in its Southern-gothic narrative and raw, bluesy setting. Your guitar work sounds caked in Mississippi dirt.
I was caked more in Mississippi bugs when we were down there. I can't say I consciously imitated them, but there is a strength to the records by those hill-country guys. They change chords where they feel like it, not where it says in some music lesson. There is freedom in that. In "Button My Lip," the verses appear where I feel they should, in the moment of singing them. It's about capturing a feeling, what's in the character's head.
Did you begin with a story line or just start writing songs?
I remember the night I played "Heart Shaped Bruise" for the first time, five years ago at Ryman Auditorium [in Nashville]. I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and read a rough draft of the outline. This was long before I had the title song.
The story is just a way of creating an environment. Structure should be liberating, not confining. In The Juliet Letters [his 1993 album with the Brodsky Quartet], I used epistles as an umbrella for different forms of expression. There's a style of film-noir song that I've been attracted to since "Watching the Detectives," that re-emerges as late as "My Dark Life" [on Songs in the Key of X, the 1996 soundtrack to The X-Files]. A particular kind of mysterious figure reoccurs as a motif in those songs - and in The Delivery Man.
"Button My Lip," "Bedlam" and "Monkey to Man" seem to be more about current events, like radio broadcasts: Here's the news of the day, and it isn't good.
The world is tapping on the window. And it's not tapping; it's roaring. It's my picture of a small society - the people in this tale - assailed from outside, by the larger worries of the world. One of the reasons Neil Young's best record is [1974's] On the Beach is because it captures disenchantment so well, that period when people just wanted to turn the lights out. That's because you had a crook in office and you were ashamed.
One of my favorite lyrics about the music business is in "Radio, Radio": "I wanna bite the hand that feeds me/I wanna bite that hand so badly." It sounds as relevant now, in the age of Clear Channel, as when I first heard you play it with the Attractions on the '77 tour. Were you pissed about anything in particular when you wrote it?
It just all seemed disgusting. You could see how people were vampires. If they got too close, they'd suck the life out of you. You wanted to clear the ground around you - a scorched-earth policy in reverse.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 9:07:17 GMT -5
Once it got started, the obnoxiousness was to keep people at bay. I recently met Martin Scorsese. I said, "I wanted to meet you all these years." And he said, "I was at your first show in Hollywood." I said, "You were?" "Yeah, with Robbie [Robertson]." If I'd known Robbie was there, I wouldn't have been able to play. I worshipped the Band. I remember being on the tour bus with the Attractions watching a bootleg of The Last Waltz as soon as it came out, until we had it memorized.
You were snubbing people you admired, that you would have liked to meet and know.
I was watching a Sam Cooke documentary recently, and [producer] Lou Adler came on. I remembered sitting at a table watching Rockpile in '78 and Adler being on the other side of the table. He handed me a piece of paper. I signed it and handed it back to him. It was his phone number [laughs]. I was being a pop star: Put a piece of paper in front of me, and I'll autograph it. I felt like such an idiot when people told me who he was. This is the guy who made the Mamas and the Papas' records. I also went around for a long time where I wouldn't sign autographs. I felt embarrassed: "What do you want my name for?"
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'd seen pop music as a kid. I'd seen the Hollies walk into the Playhouse Theatre in London - I was nine years old, with my dad - and they must have driven overnight in their van. They had sweaters on like I had at school. And [guitarist] Tony Hicks had a hole in the elbow. I was shocked that someone I'd seen on TV would have a sweater with a hole in it. How come his mother didn't sew it up? It made stardom seem normal. The mystery went out of it.
You spoke at length about the Columbus, Ohio, incident to ROLLING STONE in 1982. But I have one question: Did you ever speak to Ray Charles before he died?
No. I had a heartbreaking moment last year. I was at an Elton John tribute in Anaheim, California. Diana did "Border Song" and killed them. And Ray came out and sang "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word." It was fucking unbelievable. As Ray's coming out, a woman is leading him. He gets to within fifteen feet of us, and they stop. The woman says, "He wants to meet Diana." I had to turn away. That wasn't the right moment.
[Long pause] It would never be the right moment, really. It would be one of those things: You have a friend who goes into rehab, and he says, "Remember that ten dollars you lost? I stole it from you." It would have been like that. Why did he need that?
What about your own sense of resolution?
I still think it would have been selfish. [Pause] I have to live with it, with every Afro-American musician I meet. Do they know? Do they think, "The guy's being nice to me, but secretly I know he's a racist"? I've heard people mutter it under their breath as they pass by, because they read it somewhere. What can I complain about? It happened. But if people don't hear the respect by now, they've got their ears the wrong way around.
Describe your musical childhood. Your father, Ross MacManus, was a successful big-band singer, and as a kid, you were a member of the Beatles fan club.
I grew up in a house with a lot of music. My mother sold records. When [jazz saxophonist] Lee Konitz played on "Someone Took the Words Away" [on North], I got him to sign the lead sheet for her. I said, "My mother was selling your records in Liverpool in 1951."
My granddad was a trumpet player. He was a ship's musician; he went back and forth on the ocean liners. He died when I was four. I barely knew him. But he was the classically trained musician in the family. He played in cinema pit orchestras, right up to the talkies. My grandmother hated Al Jolson, because he put my grandfather out of work.
Between five and sixteen, I lived in Twickenham [in London]. The Rolling Stones were playing nearby, at the Station Hotel in Richmond. The Who were at Eel Pie Island. The Yardbirds lived in the next street. They had a van with YARDBIRDS written on it. I'd see [Fleetwood Mac guitarist] Peter Green in this record shop I used to go to - looking like Jesus in his rugby shirt and long hair.
I was living in rock & roll central, although I didn't think so at the time. I was into American stuff and the Beatles. I never paid attention to the Who after "I Can See for Miles." I've never heard Tommy. I don't own a copy of Who's Next. I don't own any Led Zeppelin records. I liked Jimi Hendrix singles - the ballads like "Little Wing" and "The Wind Cries Mary," because they were like Curtis Mayfield songs. "Rocking Horse Road" [on 1994's Brutal Youth] is a cross between a Curtis song and a Hendrix ballad, with a bit of Small Faces thrown in.
Did you always envision yourself as a singer as well as a songwriter?
I sang as a kid. Because my dad could sing, everyone assumed I could. I was dragged out of class by the nuns to sing for visiting priests. I sang in the choir, but my voice got too loud. I got kicked out. And I had all the usual, horrifying music lessons: violin for a week, the recorder.
My dad was very fond of Spain - we'd driven there a few times - and he bought me a guitar, literally a Spanish guitar, when I was thirteen. I eventually broke the neck. I put steel strings on it, thinking I could turn it into a folk guitar. But I remember the first song I learned: "Man of the World," by Peter Green.
When did you write your first song?
Right away. It was called "Winter."
What was it about?
Winter - "and she's gone" [laughs]. It was a melancholy love song in E minor. It sounded Elizabethan.
I've heard demo tapes you made in the mid-1970s with your band Flip City. Some of them sound a lot like '72 Bruce Springsteen.
That's who we were copying. When Bruce came to London for "the future of rock & roll" gigs in 1975, we were like, "Who are these johnny-come-latelies?" We'd been digging him for years. I loved The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. The songs are so operatic. Then he narrowed it down. I learned something from that. When he wanted to get over, he wrote "Born to Run."
How did you end up at Stiff Records?
I had this idea that I was a songwriter rather than a performer. I'd been to all the major publishers. I'd give them tapes with thirty songs on them, go in and make them listen to me play, because I'd seen that in the movies: "I've got a song for you." I had no idea about presentation.
When I saw that Nick Lowe was on a label and it was only two stops on the tube from where I worked, I took off sick one day and took my tape in. They were mostly the songs on the first album. Later I got a call. They thought some of them were good. But they still thought the songs were for somebody else.
What was the label's first reaction to your real name?
I don't remember Jake [Riviera, Stiff co-founder and Costello's then manager] having one. But everybody had pseudonyms then. It didn't seem unusual. When Elvis Presley died [in August 1977, a month after the U.K. release of My Aim Is True], it got funny for a minute. There was concern it would be misinterpreted as a cash-in.
Too much has been made of it. I changed my name on my passport, in a fit of bravado, for two years in the late Seventies. I decided it was stupid; I wanted my family name back. Then I put MacManus in the writing credits for a while. But I started getting cover versions, songs I actually wrote for other artists, and they wanted songs from Elvis Costello. I'm more at ease with the name now than I've ever been.
On the early albums, you seemed to specialize in confrontational songs about emotional betrayal and failed relationships.
Being the patron saint of a certain kind of woman-hating dweeb is not a great career. Let me say that, right out. Can I also say this? I've always loved women, to the point of getting myself in a lot of trouble. I used to see the word misogynist in reviews all the time. I would think, "Are these people not listening to the songs?" I'm talking about the ideal: the illusion of fashion as opposed to the soul of a person. This Year's Model is a very moral record. It was the last time I had that kind of certainty in my life. Then I was all over the place for the next five or six years.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 9:07:49 GMT -5
Was there a real-life Alison?
It's a hybrid of several people. The song is about a person growing up and realizing life isn't going to be ideal: "I know this world is killing you." You're not going to be this innocent girl that I first knew - and it's me that's doing it. There's not a huge distance between that and "There's a Story in Your Voice" [on The Delivery Man], where I'm singing about a character at a similar moment in later life - and she is realizing that the guy is a liar.
Many of your songs are crammed with words and images, sung very fast. When do you know enough's enough?
I threw away five verses of "Pump It Up" - it was amphetamine nonsense. Other times, there is a point to the sheer weight. "Tokyo Storm Warning" [on 1986's Blood and Chocolate] is a travelogue; it's about claustrophobia. There are different ways to write. A lot of the Imperial Bedroom songs make no sense. They sketch things: "Beyond Belief," "Man Out of Time." That's the way I felt. My life wasn't certain. The first excitement of success had run its course. Those are very tortured songs, like "Almost Blue." Some are disguised. There's the song about the day John Lennon got shot: "Kid About It." I didn't want to believe the news. But I didn't want to write some John-is-gone song. It had to be more subtle, to have any meaning.
What is a typical songwriting day for you?
I can never say. You never know when you're doing it. I have notebooks, pens and tape recorders all over. If I'm in a restaurant and suddenly get an idea, I'll run to a phone and sing it into my answering machine. I'll record that onto a Dictaphone, so I can finish the idea later. More often than not, the things demanding your attention are the ones worth writing. That was true of the North songs. I couldn't put them out of my mind.
How was writing with Diana different from your other collaborations?
It was more personal. You're sharing your life with somebody. She would write pages and pages, like a journal. She wrote almost every image in the lyrics. I put them into order. I did the editorial job. "The Girl in the Other Room" - I wrote two changes and the melodic line at the end of the chorus. All of the other music is hers. It was just, "Tell it to me, write it down." I would sit in a room while she worked on the music. And we'd put the two things together.
Did you feel obliged to be more tender in your treatment of her words, because of your relationship?
You don't make special allowances. But the original impulses are coming from someone with a more tender heart than I perhaps have. "Narrow Daylight" is a beautiful song, one I would not have had the courage to write on my own. That is my image: looking out a hotel window at one of those low skies, that hopeful bit of light between ground and sky. Everything else is Diana's, her reflection on trying to lift herself up after something's knocked her down hard.
What did you know about Diana's music before you met her?
I had all of her records. I don't think she had mine [laughs]. We'd met once briefly. I said she should do "My Thief" [from the 1998 collaboration with Burt Bacharach, Painted From Memory]. I thought it might be a good song for her.
When did you know it was love, not just musical empathy?
You take a long time to admit that to yourself. I believed we could be friends, compatible collaborators. Then something happens that you can't control. I'm thankful for that. I've never felt better in my life.
Has that changed the way you write for yourself now?
Not so much in the songs as in the freedom I feel. When North came out, I was reluctant to attach the songs so directly to the circumstances in my life. The specifics are there for private reasons. But if the record came out now. . . . [Pauses] It would never be easy to say it: "Like my record, because it's about my life" [laughs].
How many songs do you have lying around right now, waiting to be recorded? Your productivity is such that people assume the number is in the hundreds.
There are two or three more Delivery Man songs, maybe four others. I did an interview in which I said I'd written fourteen of my best songs - the North songs. They printed it as "forty" [laughs]. It's not effortless. I despaired, for a time, of writing any more words. In "This House Is Empty Now" [on Painted From Memory], I meant this house [points to his head]. That's why I love North. I let myself write without reservation. The album ends with "I'm in the Mood Again." I really feel that. People will assume, "Well, it's going to be more of that from now on, because he's married that jazz girl."
But you know what? [Smiles] That jazz girl loves The Delivery Man.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 11, 2004 9:09:47 GMT -5
Elvis Costello
The Delivery Man
( Lost Highway )
Elvis Costello makes dual `Delivery' Review by Larry Katz Friday, September 24, 2004
The prolific Elvis Costello releases two albums on the same day and, while both are rewarding, they couldn't be more different. ``The Delivery Man'' started out as a concept album about the womanizing title character, who ``looked like Elvis'' and ``felt like Jesus.'' Costello dropped the story, kept some songs and added others to make an album rooted in - but not beholden to - country, blues, r & b and bruising, vinegar-soaked rock 'n' roll. He sings duets with Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris, but the rhythmic, lyrical and sonic depth of his music bears his individual stamp and makes it anything but a genre exercise. ``Il Sogno'' (The Dream) is a classical Elvis project: an instrumental score for a new production of ``Midsummer Night's Dream'' performed by an Italian ballet company. Costello demonstrates impressive skill as a symphonic composer and orchestrator. He's studied his Ravel and - watch your back John Williams - proves he's fully prepared for a gig writing film scores. ``Il Sogno'' lacks memorable and fully developed themes, but its liveliest, most modern passages hint that the musically restless Costello could write an Ellingtonian jazz score next. ELVIS COSTELLO ``The Delivery Man'' (Lost Highway). Three and a half stars (out of four).
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 13, 2004 15:37:35 GMT -5
Elvis Costello: Country to ClassicalIn a career that's spanned more than 20 years, Elvis Costello has distinguished himself as one of pop music's most prolific and versatile musicians. His numerous records have embraced elements of punk, jazz, country, gospel and classical. With two new CDs, The Delivery Man and Il Sogno, Costello continues to push musical boundaries. NPR's Michele Norris speaks with Costello about his new music. Recorded in Oxford, Miss., The Delivery Man is rooted in country, blues and Southern Americana. The womanizing title character, who "looks like Elvis'' and "feels like Jesus," is revived from the song "Hidden Shame," which Costello wrote for Johnny Cash in 1986. The CD also includes duets with Nashville stars Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Costello's other new release is a full-length symphony based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Il Sogno, or The Dream, is a rhythmic, impressionistic work with touches of jazz. Originally commissioned in 2000 by the Italian dance company Aterbaletto, it is Costello's first full-length orchestral work. Hear 'There's A Story in Your Voice' from 'The Delivery Man' courtesy 'All Songs Considered' javascript:getStaticMedia('/asc/lookahead_fall04/20040921_asc_12','RM,WM'); 'Needle Time' javascript:getStaticMedia('/atc/20041012_atc_needle','RM,WM'); 'Nothing Clings Like Ivy' javascript:getStaticMedia('/atc/20041012_atc_ivy','RM,WM'); More Music from Elvis Costello www.elviscostello.com/music.asp
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 20, 2004 8:43:38 GMT -5
Elvis Costello to Rock Amoebaby Matthew Gasteier | 10.18.2004 Singer-songwriting legend Elvis Costello will be making a surprise in-store appearance tomorrow, October 19 at 6 p.m. at Amoeba Music in Hollywood. The British rocker will be performing a mini-set, after which he will be signing copies of his 2 new releases, The Delivery Man and Il Songno. Amoeba, which has hosted recent shows from PJ Harvey and Midnight Movies, suggest parking across the street at the Arclight parking structure for the show.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 25, 2004 9:01:14 GMT -5
Elvis Costello's Il Sogno: Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony OrchestraBy Matthew Page Sydney Star Observer Issue 736 Published 21/10/2004 Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream has received another outing, this time in the form of a ballet score, Il Sogno (The Dream), by the harmoniously austere Elvis Costello. Costello apparently abhors comparison with other composers and their compositions when tracking the inspirational incentive for his own work, and mostly rightly so, but after repeated listening I need to get these names out of my head – Bach, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Stravinsky, Britten, Copland, Gershwin, Bernstein, Poulenc, Ravel, and film scorers Mancini and Williams. Costello’s oeuvre usually contains elements of jazz, folk, punk, soul, bluegrass and rhythm and blues and there are traces of all these styles here as well as a new wistful bow being shown tripping along with the narrative fantasy. The gallantry of fanfares, hunting horns and ceremonial themes, whilst robust, tends to border on cliché, but fortunately is never completely trite. Perhaps the nature of ballet scores requires partial caricature to clarify dramatic intention and aid ease of understanding. So come hang with the hippest Latin swaying fairies in the forest – the score is picturesque in detail, simple in its task and ultimately satisfying on its merry journey.
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Post by Fuggle on Oct 25, 2004 9:05:37 GMT -5
This Elvis is very much still in the buildingOctober 23, 2004 Elvis Costello keeps it primitive, musically speaking. Photo: SuppliedElvis Costello is a musical polymath. He talks with Neil McCormick about his two latest vastly diverse ventures.'I had all the pop success I could take. I was sick of it," says Elvis Costello, pondering that brief period when he was the hottest songwriter in the music business, the new wave's answer to Bob Dylan. "I was ready to quit in '79 because it's an empty thing to just have a bunch of uncomprehending teenagers waiting for you to sing Oliver's Army because that's what they've seen on Top of the Pops. "Every time I have a hit it becomes a burden, a thing that you've got to drag around to the next bit of your career. There's got to be more to life than having been famous for half a dozen songs. I didn't want to make it bigger and bigger, so I took a different route." Actually, Costello took several different routes, often at the same time, weaving a highly erratic path through pop culture. Certainly one of the most brilliant and arguably the most eclectic musical talent of our times, Costello has just released two albums simultaneously. "Just the mere two," as he puts it himself. "I haven't gone completely mad!" The Delivery Man is Costello's most fully realised collection of songs since his '80s heyday, a raw and slightly ragged album tinged by country darkness, full of barbed emotion, rich melodies and sharp, lyrical twists. In contrast, Il Sogno is Costello's first full-length orchestral work, an adventurous and almost skittish blend of jazz, swing and classical performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. It was commissioned by Italy's Aterballeto dance company for their adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Such diverse releases would be extraordinary by any musical standards, but they represent only a fraction of Costello's output. When I caught up with him recently in New York, he was celebrating his 50th birthday by performing three entirely different concerts at the prestigious Lincoln Centre, covering 70 songs, from punk rock to bebop, backed variously by a Dutch jazz orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and his own rock band the Imposters. All the music comes out of the same head," says Costello. "It's just using different methods to get at the solution to whatever motivated you to write in the first place." Costello is a musical polymath, with enormous artistic curiosity, a wide-ranging intelligence and a very quick mind. Sometimes too quick. He is not always an easy man to interview. I have met him several times and, despite being a fan, found him a rather spiky, combative and vaguely paranoid individual, prone to finishing your sentences for you (not always as you had intended) and with a tendency to take things the wrong way. Yet this time, Costello proves unusually relaxed and good-humoured. Married (for the third time) to acclaimed jazz chanteuse Diana Krall, the tenderness with which he addresses his wife when her phone call interrupts our interview suggests personal happiness may be at the root of his altered mood. Born Declan McManus, Costello's father, Ross, was a big-band leader and Costello's early albums display a musicality more advanced than was generally heard in the punk movement. When I asked what drew him to identify with punk he smiles. "It was just direct and argumentative, and, as you know, I'm a bit like that myself. But I never bought the year-zero idea of punk. Punks just had a shorter catalogue of musical reference points than I did." Costello then launches into a dizzying monologue about the historical development of Western music, encompassing the harmonic innovations of Bach, Debussy's appropriation of Balinese gamelan music, the reinterpretation of classical concepts in film music, and the ambient theories of Brian Eno. "There are a lot of uses of different ideas in music that keep coming round. You get these emotional explosive things like punk rock: dismissal of the status quo is as important as innovation, isn't it? Oddly for such an avowed music lover, Costello considers himself a limited player. "I don't think in schooled terms. I play the guitar and piano in pretty rudimentary fashion. I can hear relatively complex things and imagine them, but, no matter how much you learn, it's good to keep a bit that's really primitive." He learned to read music only 10 years ago after becoming "frustrated and embarrassed" that he couldn't make himself more clearly understood when working with classically trained musicians. "Once I learnt how to write music down I could determine musical values more precisely while keeping this idiot version of myself somewhere in there, in the compositional side, which is the same guy who picks up the guitar and thrashes out a song." The strength of his musical imagination is reflected in how he composed the 200-page score of Il Sogno without actually picking up an instrument. "I was imagining the entire orchestra in my head and writing it straight down, chord by chord, line by line. I think when you hear orchestral music written on the piano, it sounds to me like an expanded piano. I'm doing a lot of things that aren't natural to any instrument, really. I've kept the primitive thing at the heart of it." For a while he thought he might never write lyrics again. "You start out having the music just serve the words, and then you start writing music that can carry some meaning and some weight of feeling on its own. It gives you a lot of freedom." The Delivery Man, meanwhile, has the energy and concision of Costello's classic early work, with the added weight of emotional maturity."I don't want to tell it all at once. I want to let people engage with it, make their own version, because everything I do is about imagination. That's the job. I'm not making records to make people dance. I'm making records to provoke certain responses, to try to stimulate people's feelings. "I don't want to do stuff that's retailing a formula. I could write Oliver's Army 2004 and it might be a hit, but what would be the purpose of it? I know I'm different from lots of songwriters. I don't think I'm better than everybody else but I'm the best version of me." - The Daily Telegraph Elvis Costello and the Imposters play two dates in Melbourne next month.
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 1, 2004 10:15:07 GMT -5
Elvis Costello offers a transatlantic personality split31.10.2004 By RUSSELL BAILLIEII Songo and The Delivery Man.He remains, at age 50, one of rock's better-known four-eyes. Though his output suggests we should add "six ears" or "two brains" to the opto-insult. Not counting compilations, some two dozen albums now bear his name since 1977's My Aim is True. As his remaining faithful know all too well, for the past 15 or so years there have been two types of Costello: rockElvis and artElvis. In the past decade there've been solid rock sets harking back to his beginnings, such as When I Was Cruel and Useless Beauty. There've also been his excursions into arts festival fare, with collaborations with the Brodsky Quartet (The Juliette Letters) or his work with the Charles Mingus Orchestra, or his album of songs for mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Van Otter. Between the two poles came Painted From Memory, his glorious collaboration with Burt Bacharach, which proved (with apologies to the late Ray Charles) that genius loves company. Unfortunately those other artElvis offerings were ones to play, pretend to be interested in and file like that really important novel you'll never finish. Maybe the two Elvi could also be classified as AmeriElvis and EuroElvis. It's not such a silly notion considering the Englishman now lives in New York with his American wife, jazz pianist-singer Diana Krall. Their marriage improved her last album, this year's The Girl in the Other Room, which featured some co-writes but didn't do much for his - last year's tepid if elegant North. But the transatlantic personality split fits this year's models. Here's one ramshackle album recorded in Mississippi with a band that, but for one member, is his old backing band, the Attractions. The other is Il Sogno, a score commissioned by the Italian dance company Aterballetto for their adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. Yes, Puck art, let's dance. Costello relished the chance to induce a skinny Bottom into a pirouette. Funnily enough, among the interlocking themes, stylistic variation and general grab-bag he does conclude that, yes, jazz is for fairies. While you could hurl a few Gerswhin comparisons its way, it does play like a soundtrack to a film of rather more earthly delights than the story that the dance company is trying to interpret. It's a diverting quasi-classical hodge-podge that won't be the most boring thing in the inevitable EuroElvis box set. So it's a good thing that The Delivery Man is so robust, raw and rockin'. It's the grittiest and most focused of his latter period rock sets but it doesn't play it dumb either. There's something vaguely Tom Waitsian going on in the songs, which come with an air of southern gothic and recurring characters seemingly tearing each other apart. Its 13 tracks start off with a wiry rock tune (Button my Lip), then a ballad (Country Darkness) then repeat the pattern through to The Scarlet Tide (one of three tracks to feature Emmylou Harris, originally recorded for the Cold Mountain soundtrack). While those pendulum swings might seem a bit clever for its own good, The Delivery Man keeps the interest up with its energy and tunes. That's whether it's offering the twang and grit of the Lucinda Williams duet There's A Story in Your Voice, the swamp-rock of Bedlam or the Harris-assisted quivering grace of Nothing Clings Like Ivy. Il Sogno may be necessarily away with the fairies but The Delivery Man shows Costello's over-achieving urge hasn't dampened his peculiar rock spirit. Its sense of abandon makes the album AmeriElvis' comeback special. Elvis Costello & The Imposters: The Delivery Man (Herald rating: * * * * ) Label: Lost Highway Elvis Costello, London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas: Il Songo (Herald rating: * * ) Label: Deutsche Grammophon
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Post by Fuggle on Nov 4, 2004 0:25:35 GMT -5
Costello will rock a day on the greenTuesday, 2 November 2004Elvis Costello and the Imposters headline this year's A Day on the Green concert at Bimbadgen Estate on November 20. This year's concert is the sixth A Day on the Green and is the start of Costello's most extensive Australian tour to date. In a real feast for music lovers Costello will be supported by Joe Camilleri, Diesel, Stephen Cummings and Mick Thomas. In a career spanning more than 25 years Costello has always followed his musical curiosity. He is perhaps best known for his performances with the Attractions, the Imposters and for recent concert appearances with pianist Steve Nieve. Add to this collaborations with Burt Bacharach, The Brodsky Quartet, Swedish mezz-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter and record producer/songwriter T Bone Burnett to name a few, it's no wonder Costello continues to inspire and delight fans around the world. A Day on the Green runs from 3pm and is a fully licensed event with no BYO alcohol allowed. Food is available on site, with visitors recommended to bring picnic rugs and deckchairs to the event. The Mercury has one double pass to see Elvis Costello and the Imposters at a Day on the Green to giveaway to its lucky readers. For your chance to win simply fill in the coupon and send it to the Maitland Mercury/A Day on the Green Giveaway, by 5pm on Tuesday November 16. (Buy a copy of the Maitland Mercury for the coupon.)
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