It was four years before Costello released another solo album — 2008’s Momofuku. He did put out an album with Allen Toussaint in the middle there, but I haven’t heard it enough to feature it here. I’ve been meaning to give it a listen but haven’t gotten around to it.
Momofuku was as spontaneous a recording as Costello has yet put out. Far from the high concepts and meticulous production of previous albums, this one happened almost by accident. Costello was recording some songs with Jenny Lewis for her album Acid Tongue when he got the bug to lay down some tracks of his own. So he quickly wrote a new batch of songs and recorded them with Lewis on backing vocals and her session players, which included members of his band The Imposters.
After browsing the EW summer preview, I’ve compiled the following list of 18 movies I want to see over the next four months. The surprising and refreshing thing about this summer is the variety of interesting (on paper, at least) non-tentpole films coming out. My top three are actually small-budget romances.
A year after When I Was Cruel, Costello released the only original album of his that I’ve chosen not to own — a collection of MOR ballads called North. I think I listened to the album twice before coming to terms with the fact that I’d never listen to it again. Even worse than the uninspired Goodbye Cruel World, it’s the only time in Costello’s career that he didn’t even make it out of the gate.
Four years after Painted From Memory, six years after All This Useless Beauty and eight years after Brutal Youth, Costello finally released another rock-n-roll album.
Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces is a pretty bad movie… a wannabe-Tarantino cynical shoot-’em-up that fancies itself way more clever than it is. 
