Elvis Costello explains how to rock and roll
Declan Patrick MacManus in art Elvis Costello was born in London on August 25, 1954, so today he turns 70. His first album, “My aim is true”came out in 1977 at the time of punk and new wave. In his long career the British musician has explored different musical styles. His latest album, “The boy named if”is dated January 2022. This is our review.
Country, pop, classical, r ‘n’ b, jazz: it’s hard to find a genre that Costello hasn’t frequented. And always with extraordinary effects: his two masterpieces are probably “King of America” (what we call “Americana” today, but played by an Englishman) and “Painted from memory”, the orchestral pop in his collaboration with Burt Bacharach. But the sound of the origins is the guitar rock of the first albums, with a punk and new wave attitude, that of the Attractions, his historic band. They have long been called the Imposters, the musicians are the same, except for bassist Bruce Thomas with whom there was a fight years ago. This is where Costello has returned with the new album: there is above all the organ of Steve Nieve, a faithful companion for a lifetime. A record with a dry and direct sound, which comes in a period rich in solid releases (the last two albums “Look now” and “Hey clockface”), but also of EPs, and even a revisitation of “This years model”, an album from ’78, in Spanish. 45 years later, Elvis Costello is still here to explain to us how to make rock, with the new album “The boy named if”.
The cover is a drawing by Costello, which brings to mind the one for “Blood & Chocolate”, a historic album by the Attractions from the 80s for which they invented a tour in which there was a wheel of fortune with song titles on the stage: you spun it and the band played the one that came out. The sound is that of a band having fun: for example, the first slow song comes on the sixth track, “Paint the red rose blue”, a title that echoes “Good year for the roses”, a country hit also from the 80s.
But it’s not about nostalgia, on the contrary: “The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories)” (this is the full title) is a vital and powerful album both in the most tense songs and in the others. Costello doesn’t just do rock, he does “Rock & Roll”: as he recently declared to Rolling Stone: “I don’t like rock very much and when people ask me my favorite records, I never mention the guitar ones. I like rock & roll, instead. I think if you lose the ‘roll’ part, a lot of the fun goes away”. If it’s true that rock has been reborn over time, some young bands should go to school with Elvis Costello to recover the roll as well, not just the rock.
Speaking of the origins of Costello’s sound: these days in Italy there is talk again of Saturday Night Live: there is a national band that will perform on one of the most famous programs on American TV. Maybe Maneskin should take a lesson from Elvis Costello: in 1977 he was the protagonist of one of the most memorable performances ever on the program. He started a song, the single that the record company wanted, but after a verse he stopped everything, saying “doing this song here doesn’t make any sense”, and started a song that was unreleased at the time, “Radio radio”, dedicated to the excessive power of the media and networks, like the one that was hosting him.
Legend has it that Lance Mercer, the show’s curator, gave him the finger throughout the performance. In response, Costello and the Attractions played with punk fury, giving a lesson in how to play live on TV. Costello was banned from the show for 12 years (but “I didn’t want a career on TV anyway”), only to be reinvited and become a symbol: “Nowadays I get quoted every time a musician does something weird on TV,” he says.
