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Elvis Costello's first mainstream pop album in years is earning raves, but just don't call it ''rock.'' He prefers ''rowdy rhythm.''
©Associated Press
October 31, 2002
NEW YORK -- Elvis Costello and his band, the Imposters, were nearing the end of a rousing, rocking set at a Manhattan club when the audience's attention began to wander.
As he started his final encore, the chilling tale of a jilted sociopath, I Want You, loud conversations and laughter could be heard from the Bowery Ballroom bar.
Costello didn't say anything, or even look annoyed. Instead, a malice-filled reading of the song did the work for him. The music quieted to a whisperlike level as Costello stepped away from the microphone to shout the line, "Did you call my name out as he held you down?" All talking ceased.
In a similar way, Costello is catching the ears of rock 'n' roll fans who may have lost patience with him after several years away from their world.
His new album, When I Was Cruel, is filled with bristling melodies, shards of distorted guitar and booming rhythms -- along with the lyrical twists to which his fans are accustomed. It has drawn some of his strongest reviews in years, and his best showing on the U.S. charts since 1980.
For followers who remember the dense, furious sound of Costello and his former band, the Attractions, it's heaven.
Costello is suspicious of such sentiment. His motives are simple: after years in which he composed and sang orchestral pop with Burt Bacharach, collaborated with classical singer Anne Sofie von Otter and toured extensively accompanied only by keyboard player Steve Nieve, he wanted to pump up the volume.
Implicit in much of the comeback talk is criticism, or ignorance, of his other work.
"It is objectionable," he said. "But it's more to be pitied than hated."
His first mainstream pop album in six years may have come sooner, but Costello wanted to wait until management turmoil at his record company, Island/Def Jam, sorted itself out. It gave him more time to write.
Costello consciously avoids the term "rock" when talking about his new disc. The word "symbolizes to me all the pompous, conceited music that I can't stand," he said.
He prefers "rowdy rhythm," and the expression is quite apt. With co-producers Ciaran Cahill, Leo Pearson and Kieran Lynch, he has crafted adventurous music informed by the drum 'n' bass movement of the past decade.
The title cut even prominently uses a sample -- from an Italian pop singer named Mina -- and repetition to ratchet up the musical tension.
The phrase "when I was cruel" is a whimsical nod to his reputation as an angry young man. He said it's hard, as he gets older (he is 47), to stay angry at people you may have disdained when you're able to see pieces of their humanity.
Speaking by phone from his home in Dublin, Ireland, Costello said he wrote his new songs as "rhythm, words, melody, harmony in that order, which is very unusual. 'Cause mostly I write with a guitar or piano where everything emerges almost simultaneously. I allowed the rhythms to dictate the spacing ofthe words."
With that approach, can the words always make sense?
"They absolutely don't make sense deliberately on some of the songs on this record," he said. "Not literal sense; it's not storybook, 'Once upon a time and the moral of the story is . . .'
"There are songs on this record that have a narrative form and songs that have a point of view, like Alibi, and there are songs that take one phrase, like 45, and relate passing events to it. And there are songs like Tart that don't have narrative; they just have images that, together with the music, I hope summon up a feeling and a sound that we sometimes all surrender to.
"It isn't always a sober-sided endeavor. It's supposed to be fun. If it provokes something in your imagination, so much the better. People hear songs and come up with all kinds of crazy interpretations; I love that. That's much better than (if) it's very easy to understand."
Even though he had written scores for British TV programs in the early '90s, Costello didn't learn to read music until shortly before recording his 1993 album The Juliet Letters with the Brodsky String Quartet.
"I've read that some people think I work in areas of art music with classical people because it's more respectable than rock 'n' roll. That's nonsense," he said. "It's refreshing. So when you pick up the electric guitar again, that's new again."
-- Information from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was used in this report.
Elvis Costello with Laura Cantrell, Sunday, 7 p.m. Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. Sold out. (727) 791-7400.