On album number 32 The Boy Named If Elvis Costello and his Imposters come rocketing out of gate with a manic ferocity. Opening cut “Farewell, OK” kinda sounds like the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” if Lennon and McCartney had been in the Clash. The message is clear: fans impatient for Costello to return to his This Year’s Model roots, the wait is over. Elvis may be 67 years old but he’s not too old to rock and roll. And lay on all his usual clever lyrical and melodic turns too.
Now when I say this record marks a return to This Year’s Model that’s only part of what’s going on. Drummer Pete Thomas is playing on the original kit from that record and you can definitely hear it at the start of tracks like “Penelope Halfpenny” and “What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love?” But the songs simply refuse to be limited to influences from just one album. “Penelope Halfpenny” is really the lyrical and melodic cousin of “Veronica” from Costello’s 1989 Warner Brothers debut Spike, though the organ riffs would be right at home on Armed Forces. “What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love?” also balances This Year’s Model drumming with an Armed Forces melodic vibe. At times it’s the sound and combination of instruments that harkens back to a particular time. “Magnificent Hurt” aces the early records formula of distinctive bass and organ runs. “Mistook Me For A Friend” and “The Man You Love To Hate” echo the gripping tension that the Attractions could sustain on a variety of cuts from the first few albums. Then again “My Most Beautiful Mistake” reminds me of the pop soul sound EC worked up on his mid-period release Mighty Like a Rose.
And then there’s the ballads. “Paint the Red Rose Blue” is that exquisitely mannered song style Elvis really got into from Trust onwards that pops up again and again over the rest of his career. I sometimes think he must crank a few of these out every day before breakfast, so effortlessly do they flow across his many releases. You want it darker? Both “Trick Out the Truth” and “Mr. Crescent” are those seemingly nice EC ballads that hint at a deeper menace the longer you keep listening to them. But the highlight on this album for me is “The Difference” with its keyboard dominated chorus. I’ve always had a soft spot for Goodbye Cruel World and the mix of elements here really remind of where Costello landed on that record.
Rock and roll Elvis is back. Though, in fairness, he never really went away. What nostalgic fans often want is a return to Elvis circa 1979, all snarl, pounding drums and relentless organ riffs. Well EC has seldom been keen to simply stand still creatively or retread old ground. He’s constantly pushed the limits of his rock and roll horizons. But on The Boy Named If Costello indulges the yearning for past glory, sprinkling hints of musical yesteryear all over the album. And the result, far from a retread, is a distinctively new Elvis synthesis.
Elvis Costello lives online here, at least some of the time.
A new feature of sorts, a tribute to the almighty single! In this age of catastrophic change in music consumption the single is back as a way of teasing interest in an artist and their new releases. It is now fairly conventional for artists to release a single well ahead of the album. Take this first round of singles – all precede their designated albums by many months. And, frankly, I can’t wait around to feature these talents!
Time it was that I waited on every Elvis Costello release like the second coming of rock and roll’s savior. And then post-Spike, I got a bit more choosy. I mean, I totally support artists going beyond whatever they’ve done in the past and Elvis clearly had many more roads left to explore. They just weren’t always my thing. But like every George Jones record, there’s seldom lacking at least one truly great cut on any given EC album. It looks like Costello’s to-be-released new album will be no exception. “Unwanted Number” is a pre-release cut from Look Now and it’s a winner. Think Imperial Bedroom meets Painted From Memory. The piano and songwriting are reminiscent of the songs from that great Costello keyboard period stretching from Imperial Bedroom through Punch the Clock and Goodbye Cruel World. Meanwhile the bridge captures the feel of the work he did with Burt Bacharach on songs like “Toledo.”
Next up is the criminally under-appreciated Paul Collins, veteran of so many great acts like the Nerves, the Breakaways, and, of course, the Paul Collins Beat. What is striking about Collins is the quality of his songwriting output over a four-decade period. His new single shows he’s still got it. “In and Out of My Head” is the pre-release single from his upcoming album, Out of My Head. The rumbly guitar is wonderfully retro yet freshly deployed on a tune that sounds like it belongs on a Roy Orbison album.
Described as “Califorian pop from sunny Utrech, the Netherlands” on their website, The Maureens have a keen ear for a melodic blend of country folk and poprock sounds. 2015’s Bang the Drum was a solid release, oozing hooks and harmonies. Now they’ve released “20 Years for the Company” from the to-be-released Something in the Air and it’s a blast of harmony-drenched goodness. Speaking to the economic insecurity of times, the song nonetheless gives off a positive vibe with it’s captivating mix of male and female vocals.
A lot of words have been written about Elvis Costello (the artist himself added a few hundred thousand in his recent autobiography 
Things changed dramatically with album number two, now backed by Costello’s defiant new band, the Attractions. This Year’s Model charges out of the gate, its stripped-down, in your face rock and roll delivered with a crisp ferocity unmatched by any of Costello’s other recordings. This is the critics’ favourite album for a reason. I like it less than the debut but still love it, particularly the catchy lead guitar line on “You Belong to Me.” Elvis dials back some of the attack on his third album, Armed Forces, letting the listener in on some impressive aural landscapes that illustrate his talent for arranging his music. This is captured nicely on the single, “Accidents Will Happen.”You Belong to Me
Get Happy!! and Taking Liberties were both released in 1980, the latter a compilation of B-sides (released as Ten Bloody Marys & Ten How’s Your Fathers in the UK). With each record topping out at 20 songs, together they represented a cornucopia of poprock. What is striking here is the restraint, the subtle hooks of “B Movie,” “New Amsterdam” and “Secondary Modern” on Get Happy!! or “Radio Sweetheart” and “Hoover Factory” on Taking Liberties. One almost gets a sense that the songs were chiseled into shape, worked over until every detail reflected the light just so. Of course, there were also more raucous examples like “Possession” or “Crawling to the U.S.A.”
Sure, when you first hear Edward O’Connell you get the Costello vibe, you get it bad (by which I mean you get something good). You might even think “Hey, this guy is putting out the albums I wish Elvis Costello would …” But the seemingly familiar Costello ring to the songs, to the vocals, to the turns of phrase is so much more than simply reminiscent. O’Connell has taken the inspiration and made it his own. And there is so much more influence afoot in his two albums of material: a bit of Matthew Sweet, a dash of Peter Case, even some Marshall Crenshaw and, of course, Nick Lowe and Tom Petty.
His debut record from 2010, Our Little Secret, is a solid start: a host of great tunes and a cover riffing off of Nick Lowe’s Jesus of Cool album and the unknown comic. “I Heard It Go” has a great turnaround in the chorus, “Cold Dark World” has wonderfully shimmery vocals, “We Will Bury You” is trademark Costello country, while “All My Dreams” sounds like a lost track from Imperial Bedroom. But the standout song on this album for me is the majestic “Pretty Wasted.” A real gem that exudes equal parts Elvis Costello and Graham Parker, with a lovely Nick Lowe lyrical sleight of hand with the line ‘She’s pretty wasted … pretty wasted on you.’ Pretty Wasted
Four long years passed before O’Connell’s sophomore effort, Vanishing Act, emerged in 2014, but it was worth the wait. The album kicks off with strong material in “My Dumb Luck” and “Lonely Crowd” but the third tune, “Every Precious Day,” is a master class in poprock songwriting: killer guitar riff opener, great Tom Pettyish vocals, with just a hint of Crowded House in the swirling organ and guitar work at the 2/3 mark. Other highlights include “Severance Kiss” (with another great guitar opener), “Odds Against Tomorrow,” “Yesterday’s World,” and “Last to Leave” with its exquisite low tempo atmosphere. “The End of the Line” deserves to be featured if only for its surprisingly aggressive guitar opener that then melds seamlessly into a super midtempo poprock number. But my favourite song on the record is the witty Nick Lowe-ish “I’m the Man,” a sad tale of a man who ‘should have seen it coming’ with his death-obsessed partner.
Poprock Record 