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Secret, Profane & Sugarcane - Elvis Costello
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Reunited with T Bone Burnett, Elvis takes another country detour.
ELVIS COSTELLO
SACRED, PROFANE AND SUGARCANE
HEAR MUSIC
It seems that San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass is something of a catalyst for a lot of musicians. Last year Dave Alvin formed the Guilty Women band especially for the occasion and Elvis Costello took the opportunity to preview quite a number of the songs from this new album.
I particularly recall the title song, ‘Sulphur To Sugarcane,’ because he also performed it the night before to great effect at the Great American Music Hall, supporting Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe & Jim Keltner in their charity gig for Austin deLone’s son Richard, who was struck down with a debilitating disease.
I also recall that festival gig vividly because I had to stand on tiptoes at a side fence to catch a glance of the band. It is not something I would do for everyone but it was worth the effort because it was a fantastic performance and one of the best I have ever seen from Costello.
At that gig he was joined on stage by Jim Lauderdale who also appears here. Even more importantly, the songs managed to reunite him with T Bone Burnett - long-time friend and former collaborator in the Cowards Brothers who has also been busy working with Robert Plant. In fact, Elvis and T Bone were initially reunited at the same event just two years earlier, just prior to the runaway success of Raising Sand.
The fact that this album is produced by Burnett certainly indicates that Costello is getting back to basics after diversions that have included rock, jazz and even classical. This time there is a definite country tinge. It is not quite a return to the homage of Almost Blue but it is certainly the most ‘rootsy’ album Costello has made in a few years. It is also his most focussed, despite the fact that some of the material has been around for a while.
When he and T-Bone first got together in 1984, Costello had already been with The Attractions for more than five years and despite his punk or so called ‘new wave’ associations (according to American labelling) his influences were always broader, his love of R&B and soul well-known and his country leanings had already been hinted at. That duo recorded together and even appeared in Australia in some memorable concerts.
For King Of America, Burnett – still in his formative days of producing - managed to connect Costello with former members of the other Elvis’s touring band. The concerts that followed with guitarist James Burton, bassist Jerry Scheff and others still live in the memory as some of Costello’s finest. Then, a few years later, Burnett worked his magic again for the acclaimed Spike (which featured the Dirty Dozen from New Orleans).
Over the past decade Burnett has proven himself to be a producer of rare taste and talent. Of course, his work on O Brother Where Art Thou? resurrected ‘old-timey’ music beyond the wildest dreams of everyone concerned. He steered Robert Plant and Alison Krauss through one of the best albums of recent years with Raising Sand, suggesting most of the songs on the album as well.
But it would be unfair to expect that this latest Costello album will emulate the success of some of the other Burnett productions of recent years. For starters, this is quite unlike those other projects and gets Burnett back working with a sole artist and probably not getting to choose all of the material.
One thing that is immediately apparent, however, is the quality of Burnett’s production. You won’t appreciate this unless you listen to it with your speakers up really loud or use a good set of headphones. Burnett has an ineffable sense of how the voice should be balanced against the instrumentation and even the songs that are not so good still sound great!
Of course, the band helps to provide a brilliant sound. The basic studio outfit consists of Dennis Crouch on double bass, Stuart Duncan (who has also played with Robert Plant) on fiddle, Mike Compton on mandolin, the incomparable Jerry Douglas on dobro and Jim Lauderdale adding harmony vocals. There are cameo appearances from Burnett, as well as Emmylou Harris on harmonies. A group like that, dear readers, could make any of us sound good too!
Most of the songs here are by Costello or are collaborations (with Burnett and also Loretta Lynn) and he performs them all himself. There are two covers: ‘Changing Partners’ and, unusually a reference to Lou Reed’s ‘Femme Fatale (which appears on the vinyl version). The album also contains several songs – ‘How Deep Is The Red’ and the following ‘She Was No Good’ - from Costello’s 2005 Hans Christian Anderson commissioned for the Royal Danish Opera, while ‘Hidden Shame’ was originally written for Johnny Cash and ‘Complicated Shadows’, originally appeared on the 1996 album All This Useless Beauty.
‘Sulphur To Sugarcane’ is the latest example of Costello’s penchant to verbosity but this time it works brilliantly. Sure it rambles along but is still compelling, reminiscent of some old-fashioned story songs. ‘Hidden Shame’ is much more upbeat but is a strange tale with a twist.
‘I Felt The Chill,’ ‘She Handed Me A Mirror’ and ‘I Dreamed Of My Old Lover,’ which appear in sequence, prove that Costello has lost none of his ability to write the heart-rending ballad.
Closing the album with ‘Changing Partners’ is a statement in itself and Costello’s gorgeous version certainly does the song justice.
Who knows what Costello will do next because he certainly has a habit of jumping musical styles at will, usually with good results (but I’ll forego the classical albums). Let’s just hope he stays with this long enough so that we can see him again in Australia or elsewhere with the fabulous musicians he and Burnett have assembled here.
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