Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane and Sugarcane
Hear/Universal
By Andrew P Street
I am never going to suggest that Elvis Costello not release a record. The man possesses one of the world's finest voices and few songwriters can hold a candle to him. And I understand that he's now technically a "heritage" artist – one whom no one expects much of beyond turning up and playing 'Pump It Up' at concerts, despite the fact that his late-period albums are at best superb (the almost-Attractions reunion album Brutal Youth; the electronic-tinged When I Was Cruel, last year's astonishingly overlooked live-rock Momofuku) and at worst interesting (the torchy, orchestral North; the country-blues The Delivery Man). Here, in a semi-return to the tones of his 'Almost Blue' album, he explores bluegrass and folk on an album that sounds (as with Momofuku) that it was knocked up on a long weekend. That's both a plus and a minus: on the one hand it's got a raw immediacy that's typical of producer T-Bone Burnett, but on the other it's hardly an album that's likely to entice anyone not already interested in the vagaries of Costello's playful muse.
Even within the one broad style, there's plenty of variety. The waltz-time ballad 'I Felt the Chill' is a co-write with no less a country music personage than Loretta Lynn, which contrasts well with the rollicking 'Hidden Shame', while the dark 'My All Time Doll' echoes the mood of Costello's wry 'God's Comic'. 'I Dreamed of My Old Lover' is an authentic-sounding folk strum, as is the superb 'Red Cotton' – and a near unrecognisable Emmylou Harris adds harmonies to the gentle zydeco of 'The Crooked Line'. The album closes with a cover of Patti Page's classic 'Changing Partners', but the oddest cover is his own: 'Complicated Shadows' is reinvented (in superior form) with mandolin and slide guitar, contrasting with the comparatively drab rock version released 13 years ago on All this Useless Beauty.
It's an undeniably well made album (and the artwork by Maakies/Sock Monkey creator Tony Millionaire is superb – would it be too much of a stretch to read a sly nod to Drinky Crow in the artwork's inclusion of a crow and a bottle?) but it's more of an impressively well-constructed genre effort than an inspired, must-hear collection of great new Costello songs.
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