Continuing my track-by-track appreciation of Elvis Costello’s Look Now…
Track two, ‘Don’t Look Now,’ is the first of three songs co-written by Burt Bacharach. This song slams on the brakes after the wild ‘Under Lime’ and takes us back to Painted From Memory territory. That Bacharach collaboration is not among my favorite Costello albums but it does have its charms, and this song does as well.
Wonder of wonders, the musical gods have graced us with a new Elvis Costello album, his first proper release since 2010’s National Ransom. He did drop 2013’s Wise Up Ghost alongside The Roots, but that collection of reworked tracks hardly counts as new material.
But this album, Look Now, is a dive back into the deep, lovely waters of classic Costello. It contains shades of his masterpiece Imperial Bedroom as well as underrated 90s gems Mighty Like a Rose and Brutal Youth. It also owes more than a little to Painted From Memory, his 1998 collaboration with Burt Bacharach, and indeed Bacharach co-wrote three of its songs.
I recently discovered Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast, in which the brilliant writer dives into episodes from history and draws out lessons that weren’t clear the first time around.
Sometimes Gladwell tackles serious issues such as war or politics; in other episodes it’s basketball or popular music. The stories, and his telling of them, are as fascinating as his essays and books.
‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ is a track from Elvis Costello’s 1993 album The Juliet Letters, a song cycle for voice and strings recorded with The Brodsky Quartet.
I try to imagine crowds watching Costello in his young punk days belting out ‘Pump It Up’ and then immediately fast-forwarding to this, or his classic country album, or his collaboration with Burt Bacharach. The man has certainly carved out a unique career path.
Elvis Costello has so many albums in such a wide range of genres that I own some I’ve barely ever heard.
Such is the case with My Flame Burns Blue, a 2006 live release featuring Costello performing with the 52-member Metropole Orkest, a jazz-pop orchestra based in the Netherlands. They played previously unreleased compositions as well as reimagined versions of Costello’s older work.
Meet Me In Montauk 