theoretically intrinsic limitations
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel comments -
Bolo tie, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, Western-style suit and shirt: Had Elvis Costello been judged solely on his outfit when he strode onstage at the Riverside Theatre Saturday night, the audience might have mistaken him for a moderately and unapologetically disreputable, if amiable, used-car salesman with a dealership on the outskirts of Fort Worth.
Fortunately, his generous sampling of nearly three decades of masterful music did help to deflect that impression. (It didn't hurt that he removed the hat almost immediately). Going from New Wave rock to old-fashioned country to classic pop, Costello performed for more than 2 1/2 hours, and although he often sweated, he rarely strained.
He also didn't fall back on the conventional pacing most musicians use when trying to conceal the toll of age: a predictable, ponderous alternation between slow and fast numbers. Instead, he favored jarring shifts - veering from an opening quartet of serrated-edge rockers to the halting backwoods waltz "Country Darkness" (from his recent, messily brilliant album, "The Delivery Man"), or pausing in the midst of the intricately icy beauty of "Clubland" to pick a few bars of "I Feel Pretty" (yes, from "West Side Story") on his guitar.
Costello indulged his associational anarchy without much stumbling, thanks to the limber responsiveness of his band, the Imposters. Steve Nieve (the very epitome of the huddled professorial keyboard genius) and Pete Thomas (a Keith Moon-level drummer with a bigger body and a smaller drum kit) utilized considerable experience from their time supporting him in the Attractions, while relative newcomer Davey Faragher was unpretentiously effective on bass and backing vocals.
The frontman himself operated well beyond his theoretically intrinsic limitations. Costello's guitar playing did once garner him the nickname "Little Hands of Concrete," and the comparison between his voice and Bob Dylan's remains not entirely inaccurate - certainly, both squeeze intense emotion from constricted throats - but he burned down considerations of mere technical skill, goaded by the Imposters and by the long reach of his talent.
Known most widely for his songs of heartbroken rage and lovelorn contempt, Costello easily poured out an aching, scarred version of his biggest hit, "Alison," and a sinuously slashing take of "Watching the Detectives." However, he also shook his head at his younger self in "When I Was Cruel No. 2" (reminiscent of a James Bond theme song adapted to the foibles of middle age), wrung his hands regretfully in "Either Side of the Same Town" (maturely epic Americana and soul) and simply kicked up his heels for rollicking covers of Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and Nick Lowe's "Heart of the City."
Yet after the crashing noise, the vertiginous tempo changes and the high genre jumps, Costello closed with "The Scarlet Tide," a folk valediction that blanketed most of the near-capacity crowd in a respectful, mournful hush. Then everyone cheered wildly, having given their money to a salesman (or delivery man?) who, despite the look of his garments, had not cheated them.
The Chicago Tribune notes -
Elvis Costello must've left the taxi meter ticking Sunday outside the Auditorium Theatre. He barely paused to catch a breath as he strung nearly three dozen songs together and left without an encore.
That said, this two-hour-plus ride on the Costello roller coaster was a more than generous performance. With his excellent band, the Imposters, Costello was in amphetamine power-pop mode, playing even a honky-tonk weeper like Merle Haggard's "The Bottle Let Me Down" at triple speed. It was a throwback to the British singer's new-wave era, when words somersaulted across dense, speedy arrangements that conveyed the restlessness and anxiety of younger men deprived of sex, sympathy and cash.
No longer playing the angry-young-man role the media once cast him for, Costello now traffics in craftsmanship, a brilliant and highly self-aware dilettante who has dabbled in writing for a string quartet, an opera singer, a jazz chanteuse and Burt Bacharach, among others. But his excesses have found a comfortable home with the Imposters, a deft pop combo that knows how to decorate a song without smothering it.
Costello's every vocal line was answered by a lick and a tickle from Steve Nieve's keyboards. It was like watching two hustlers striving to impress the same girl, their complementary lines at times spilling over into playful games of one-upmanship.
The singer couldn't resist arching an eyebrow as he turned a clever couplet or dropped a hip musical allusion. He knows his musical history and he wants the audience to know it too, as he inserted a guitar lick from "West Side Story" into the middle of "Clubland," transformed a Smokey Robinson chord progression into the soul ballad "Rocking Horse Road" and morphed his "Alison" into a hit by another Elvis, "Suspicious Minds."
Nieve had an answer for everything, and more. "Needle Time" might've been a fairly conventional blues lament, but the keyboardist's orchestrations turned it into something surreal. He got to indulge his inner Bacharach with the florid piano balladry of "In the Darkest Place" and "Poisoned Rose," and channeled Jerry Lee Lewis' double-fisted attack on "Mystery Dance." When his armada of keyboards wasn't enough, he turned to a theremin to bring the sci-fi weirdness to "Bedlam," and melodica to conjure a country feel on "Our Little Angel."
Drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher kept the busy duo from losing momentum. They found a fifth gear as the show came to a close, including thrilling takes on "Get Happy!" gems "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" and "High Fidelity." Costello wound things down with a rustic ballad, "Scarlet Tide," doing a Tony Bennett impression as he sang a verse without the aid of a microphone.
The crowd ate up this little piece of theater, and cheered for more. But by then, Elvis had left the building.
Masterful Costello defies age and genres
By JON M. GILBERTSON
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: April 17, 2005
Bolo tie, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, Western-style suit and shirt: Had Elvis Costello been judged solely on his outfit when he strode onstage at the Riverside Theatre Saturday night, the audience might have mistaken him for a moderately and unapologetically disreputable, if amiable, used-car salesman with a dealership on the outskirts of Fort Worth.
Fortunately, his generous sampling of nearly three decades of masterful music did help to deflect that impression. (It didn't hurt that he removed the hat almost immediately). Going from New Wave rock to old-fashioned country to classic pop, Costello performed for more than 2 1/2 hours, and although he often sweated, he rarely strained.
He also didn't fall back on the conventional pacing most musicians use when trying to conceal the toll of age: a predictable, ponderous alternation between slow and fast numbers. Instead, he favored jarring shifts - veering from an opening quartet of serrated-edge rockers to the halting backwoods waltz "Country Darkness" (from his recent, messily brilliant album, "The Delivery Man"), or pausing in the midst of the intricately icy beauty of "Clubland" to pick a few bars of "I Feel Pretty" (yes, from "West Side Story") on his guitar.
Costello indulged his associational anarchy without much stumbling, thanks to the limber responsiveness of his band, the Imposters. Steve Nieve (the very epitome of the huddled professorial keyboard genius) and Pete Thomas (a Keith Moon-level drummer with a bigger body and a smaller drum kit) utilized considerable experience from their time supporting him in the Attractions, while relative newcomer Davey Faragher was unpretentiously effective on bass and backing vocals.
The frontman himself operated well beyond his theoretically intrinsic limitations. Costello's guitar playing did once garner him the nickname "Little Hands of Concrete," and the comparison between his voice and Bob Dylan's remains not entirely inaccurate - certainly, both squeeze intense emotion from constricted throats - but he burned down considerations of mere technical skill, goaded by the Imposters and by the long reach of his talent.
Known most widely for his songs of heartbroken rage and lovelorn contempt, Costello easily poured out an aching, scarred version of his biggest hit, "Alison," and a sinuously slashing take of "Watching the Detectives." However, he also shook his head at his younger self in "When I Was Cruel No. 2" (reminiscent of a James Bond theme song adapted to the foibles of middle age), wrung his hands regretfully in "Either Side of the Same Town" (maturely epic Americana and soul) and simply kicked up his heels for rollicking covers of Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down" and Nick Lowe's "Heart of the City."
Yet after the crashing noise, the vertiginous tempo changes and the high genre jumps, Costello closed with "The Scarlet Tide," a folk valediction that blanketed most of the near-capacity crowd in a respectful, mournful hush. Then everyone cheered wildly, having given their money to a salesman (or delivery man?) who, despite the look of his garments, had not cheated them.
From the April 18, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Costello full of new-wave restlessness
By Greg Kot
Tribune music critic
April 18 2005, 1:30 AM CDT
Elvis Costello must've left the taxi meter ticking Sunday outside the Auditorium Theatre. He barely paused to catch a breath as he strung nearly three dozen songs together and left without an encore.
That said, this two-hour-plus ride on the Costello roller coaster was a more than generous performance. With his excellent band, the Imposters, Costello was in amphetamine power-pop mode, playing even a honky-tonk weeper like Merle Haggard's "The Bottle Let Me Down" at triple speed. It was a throwback to the British singer's new-wave era, when words somersaulted across dense, speedy arrangements that conveyed the restlessness and anxiety of younger men deprived of sex, sympathy and cash.
No longer playing the angry-young-man role the media once cast him for, Costello now traffics in craftsmanship, a brilliant and highly self-aware dilettante who has dabbled in writing for a string quartet, an opera singer, a jazz chanteuse and Burt Bacharach, among others. But his excesses have found a comfortable home with the Imposters, a deft pop combo that knows how to decorate a song without smothering it.
Costello's every vocal line was answered by a lick and a tickle from Steve Nieve's keyboards. It was like watching two hustlers striving to impress the same girl, their complementary lines at times spilling over into playful games of one-upmanship.
The singer couldn't resist arching an eyebrow as he turned a clever couplet or dropped a hip musical allusion. He knows his musical history and he wants the audience to know it too, as he inserted a guitar lick from "West Side Story" into the middle of "Clubland," transformed a Smokey Robinson chord progression into the soul ballad "Rocking Horse Road" and morphed his "Alison" into a hit by another Elvis, "Suspicious Minds."
Nieve had an answer for everything, and more. "Needle Time" might've been a fairly conventional blues lament, but the keyboardist's orchestrations turned it into something surreal. He got to indulge his inner Bacharach with the florid piano balladry of "In the Darkest Place" and "Poisoned Rose," and channeled Jerry Lee Lewis' double-fisted attack on "Mystery Dance." When his armada of keyboards wasn't enough, he turned to a theremin to bring the sci-fi weirdness to "Bedlam," and melodica to conjure a country feel on "Our Little Angel."
Drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher kept the busy duo from losing momentum. They found a fifth gear as the show came to a close, including thrilling takes on "Get Happy!" gems "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down" and "High Fidelity." Costello wound things down with a rustic ballad, "Scarlet Tide," doing a Tony Bennett impression as he sang a verse without the aid of a microphone.
The crowd ate up this little piece of theater, and cheered for more. But by then, Elvis had left the building.
Copyright © 2005, The Chicago Tribune