‘Suspect My Tears,’ the tenth track on Elvis Costello’s Look Now, is truly a wild ride. Ignore the lyrics and it sounds like a full-blown schmaltzy 70s love song. He wrote this one alone, but it could easily pass for one of his earlier Burt Bacharach collaborations.
Read the lyrics, though, and you’ll realize this is a bitter attack by a man who has grown tired of his lover’s crocodile tears and is threatening to shed some of his own. It’s the nastiest song on the album.
‘Dishonor the Stars,’ the ninth track on Elvis Costello’s new album Look Now, is the only love song on an album full of tracks about sorrow and regret.
I don’t know if it’s a coincidence that it’s also my least favorite song on the album. Costello isn’t exactly known for his romantic side.
“Least favorite” sounds a little harsh, though every list has to have something at the bottom. It’s more accurate to say this is the song I’ve taken the longest to warm to.
Track eight of Elvis Costello’s Look Now is the second collaboration with Burt Bacharach, and another of the album’s best cuts.
While longtime Costello bandmate Steve Nieve plays the piano on most of Look Now, Bacharach himself tickles the ivories on this track. His classy, delicate playing is a perfect compliment to Costello’s hushed vocals.
Track seven of Elvis Costello’s Look Now, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hush’ is one of the most fun songs on the album.
This is the funkiest, grooviest track on Look Now but it doesn’t feel out of place. Costello has a way of skipping through genres on a single album without sacrificing the cohesiveness of the whole. This might be his Imperial Bedroom meets Painted From Memory album, but that doesn’t mean he can’t slip in a little Get Happy!! or Trust.
Sitting at the midpoint of Elvis Costello’s Look Now, sixth track ‘I Let the Sun Go Down’ is my front-runner for the best song on the album.
It’s also the moment I realized Look Now may well be Costello’s best album since 1986’s King of America and Blood & Chocolate. Bold statement, I know. And while I can make an argument for Spike, Brutal Youth, Momofuku and National Ransom, this album taps the vein of classic Costello in a way none of those releases did.
