The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Pretty self-explanatory
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sulky lad
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sulky lad »

Hawksmoor wrote:
Arnie wrote:The "yeah, yeah, yeah," and "dance a little jig" . . . embarrassingly BAD moments in the canon of anything Elvis has ever done. Mistook me for a friend is painful for me to listen to.

The album has bright spots, but I would put it equal with Clockface and Don't Look Now. Delivery Man and Momo were much better as Imposters Albums go. But I do hear lots of great moments from the band in this album. It just won't crack my top 15 of his 30. Sorry.

His rockers fail to rock for me anymore. Feel mostly contrived, except when he strips it down solo. HIs ballads have gotten WAY better though, and I think this is the new voice he feels more comfortable/natural in and should embrace.
Heh. I seem to recall from a previous post that you were averse to the 'yeah, yeah, yeah's (apologies if I'm misquoting you and that was somebody else). I love the 'yeah, yeah, yeah's, and I think the 'dance a little jig' is funny, clever and catchy. It even reminds me of the delightful 'dancing the hesitation [pause] waltz' gag at the end of 'Josephine'. I'd even go further and suggest that the drum-fill on 'dance a little jig' is approximately the same one Pete plays on 'Night Rally', so that's a nice link.

But it looks like we're on opposite sides of the tracks anyway - and that's fine. 'Mistook Me for a Friend' is the track I'm returning to most often at the moment. I love the way he spits out 'poverty row' - classic old-school Elvis, for me. And given what we think we know about the order of :roll: contributions (ie Steve last), the keyboards are phenomenal, and bring a big smile to my face. And the Imposters swing. I know he's always had this thing about 'rock music = bad/rock'n'roll = good' (because it 'swings'), but you can really hear it on this LP.
Arnie wrote:His rockers fail to rock for me anymore. Feel mostly contrived...HIs ballads have gotten WAY better though.
And as for this...I mostly agree, but I'm going to pedantically pick up on 'contrived', which is a bête noire of mine whenever anybody uses it of a book, a song, a film, whatever. 'It's contrived'. And? What did you expect? This is an artist, working away to create and polish a piece of work which they want to appeal to the most people. 'Contriving' is the day job :).

On the other hand, I've always preferred the ballads to the rockers (give me 'You Tripped at Every Step' over '20% Amnesia' every day). But a lot of the rockers are still great, and there are some rockers on this LP as good as any rockers he's done, in my opinion.

I loved Hey Clockface, and probably played it pretty much every day through the lockdown - it got me through. But I think this is better. Lyrics are great, great tunes and memorable hooks everywhere, and the Imposters are on fire. I'd seriously put it up there with his very best.
I can only assume you are my twin and we were accidentally separated at birth - :wink:
thanks for atriculating so much more coherently than I can manage to describe my feelings about this masterpiece !
Neil.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Neil. »

Just wanted to add to the stockpile of praise for this album!

The very first listen had me gasping. Life is so busy at the mo that I haven't got time to gather my thoughts track by track, but overall it is a thrilling album. I think Look Now was also a brilliant piece of work, so this late career achievement is so exciting to witness.

As everyone else is saying, the band are on fire in all departments, the energy is so high, and the production is fantastic. It's brimming with delights and details.

I think my favourite tracks are the title track - it's so mysterious and has such a mighty sound - I love that piano riff - well, I love all of it! - and What If I Can't Give You... It's so exciting and passionate. The two vaudeville songs are fantastic - he's having such fun with the spooky imagery on Trick Out the Truth. Death of Magic Thinking is still yielding its delights - I tend to miss the last few songs cos I listen while tidying up, so often don't get to the end. But I really like that one and the final track.

For me, Mistook Me For A Friend is probably the one I would have left off - I'm not into the Pump It Up rehash, however deliberate the nod of the hat is. And Pump It Up is so sharp and spiky, whereas this one has a much blurrier melody (I don't mean by that it's like a Damon Albarn song). Also Farewell OK, though very well done, is such a parody of the Mersey sound that it feels a bit of a novelty, like a b-side. And yep, the ballad I'm still finding hard to get into. If those 3 were left off, it would be wall-to-wall bangers. (But, this being Elvis, even these three songs have their charms!!)
sweetest punch
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.hotpress.com/music/punch-th ... 22891710[b]

Punch The Clock: An Interview With Elvis Costello[/b]

The bright, shiny, and brilliant The Boy Named If is the latest act in the on-going Elvis Costello show. “I’m always anxious to do anything that's a new adventure, because you come out of it knowing something you didn't know when you went in,” he tells Pat Carty.

The fifteen minute interview, as the great Pete Paphides recently pointed out, is a tricky customer. For every one where fifteen minutes is about ten minutes too long, there are many where an hour, or two, doesn’t even scratch the surface. Having spent decades listening to his music - I could point at eight albums, at least, that are unquestionable classics – as well as closely reading his interviews, sleeve notes, and that marvellous autobiography, Unfaithful Music And Disappearing Ink, I’ve always suspected that Elvis Costello would fall into the latter category. Having said that, will we take the fifteen minutes on offer? Of course we will.

Costello is on the Zoom circuit to push his new album with The Imposters, The Boy Named If, which is a very good, loud, clanging rock n’ roll record, and not a million miles away from some of those classics recorded with his first backing band and alluded to above. Indeed, in the circulated press materials, Costello has this to say, “This year, This Year’s Model came back to surprise us in another tongue. That edition is called Spanish Model. Both that album and The Boy Named If are records that are happening right now and if you want to draw a line between them, go right ahead.” Spanish Model, as he’ll sort of explain himself, was a 2021 release where Costello’s voice was removed from the master tapes of that first Attractions record and replaced with various Latin singers. So, as he indicated it was ok to do so, I’ll open by drawing that line. I have a thousand questions but, in my haste to maximise the allotted time, I make a balls of the first one.

“What record did you say?’ asks Costello, eyebrow raised above the rim of his dark glasses.

Spanish Angel. The re-jig of My Aim Is True. I mean, This Year’s Model.

“Spanish Model?”

Spanish Model! I do apologise.

“’Spanish Angel’ is the song I’ll write next week.”

I hold up a copy of This Year’s Model in my defence and point out it was purchased with my own money, which earns a laugh. I persevere. Did going back to those tapes reignite something for him? After all that palaver, Costello isn’t having it anyway.

“No,” he states, categorically. “Bear in mind I had recorded in Helsinki, in those carefree days when you could just get on a plane and go anywhere, and made some sort of noisy, clattery kind of music on my own, just for the hell of it. There’s a lot of guitar on ‘No Flag’ [on 2020’s Hey Clockface and inspired, at least in part, by The Stooges, according to the man himself] so you could draw a line from that to this record, but I don't really think this record sounds like those recordings.”

Maybe not, but it’s at least in the same clattery ballpark. Elvis fills in some more detail behind the Spanish Model project.

“We opened up the tapes again, the multi tracks, because we had to remix ‘This Year’s Girl’ for David Simon’s series The Deuce, and we heard how good everything still sounded. And when we took my voice out to put another singer in, as they had requested, I just had this notion to do this with every song on the record, in Spanish, and I knew Sebastian [Krys, multi-Grammy winning producer who has been working with Costello since 2018’s Look Now] knew which singers would have fun doing it. It was tremendous to hear the songs sung again in a very different way in another language, but I don't like to say, ‘Well, I've done that so now I have to do something different’. It's just what I'm doing. It's always been that way. I never really made a master plan.”

I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down

I start into my next question by saying that Costello has described Look Here as uptown pop. I’ve done it again, and he’s on to me.

“It’s Look Now! Look Here is a bit more threatening. I think that’s a better title. You could have an advert for it, ‘Look Here! Here’s these songs, you better fucking listen to them!”

Well, if that was an uptown pop record…

“Pat, I’m gonna call you up before I put every record out in the future and check that the title is really the one it should be, because you're coming up with better titles. Look Here and Spanish Angel. That's the remix album forty years from now. Spanish Angel is going to be the a Serbo-Croat remix of This Year's Model.”

When you record an album of Mink DeVille songs, call it Spanish Angel, I offer. I think he’s laughing with me, rather than at me. I think so. An uptown pop record like Look Now - a criminally underrated album - calls for some heavy duty arranging. Is a record like this one easier to do? This query sends him off again and it is at this point that I quietly crumble up my sheet of carefully prepared questions and throw it in the bin, feeling it best to just let him at it.

“They're all arrangements, but with Look Now, you had to give a bit more thought to where you didn't play, because if I had Steve [Nieve, Attractions and Imposters keyboard genius] just going out on every track, then it would obviously collide with where I'd written the orchestration. I wanted it to sound like when they used to go into the studio with an orchestra and all play at once so I knew where we should and shouldn't sing and play. That record is the kind of music I really love, and it's the kind of music that's on Imperial Bedroom [1982 if-it-ain’t-baroque-don’t-fix-it masterpiece] and on Painted From Memory [1998’s awe-inspiring collaboration with Burt Bacharach, more on which later]. Look Now was the first record The Imposters had made without being on location. We weren't in Mississippi, we weren't working with Allen Toussaint in New Orleans [2006’s The River In Reverse, you should buy that one too], we were doing something that was just us, some songs I'd had for a while, and some brand new songs.”

“Hey Clockface was a mixture as well, because I didn't know where that recording was going to end. And of course, circumstances that we've all lived through affected the way that record was concluded. There were going to be more sessions but I came home and listened to, and liked, what I’d done - I'd cut twelve songs in five days - and two more pieces completed that puzzle.”

This brings Costello up to the genesis of The Boy Named If.

“After a couple of months of being home,” he continues with very little, if any, pause, “we started to realise we weren't going back on the stage anytime soon. Pete [Thomas, the man Costello recently said has been promoted to the position of best drummer in the world now that Charlie Watts is no longer with us] likes to be ready to play so he puts the hours in every day. What does he do? He goes down in his basement. What does he have in his basement? He has the same drum kit as he played on This Year’s Model. That's his practice kit, this Gretsch that he's always kept. A drum kit in a little room is kind of the sound that I started with, ‘Watching The Detectives’ is the sound of a drum kit bouncing off of a wall that's really close. He was playing along with all his favourite records but he was getting bored, he wanted to do something. I sent him one of these tunes, just me hammering it down on one guitar, and he sent it back to me with the drums in place. Then I sent it to Davey [Faragher, Imposters bass-playing hero who’s also togged out for Richard Thompson and John Hiatt].”

“I don't really think it's influenced by anything from the past,” he says, returning to my first question. “The uninhibited way we're playing, and the trust that we have in each other, is why it came out sounding energetic and vivid. The songs are about different times in life; you're leaving all the wonder and magical things of childhood and getting into lust and algebra when you're a teenager, then you're in your early 20s and you don't know what's right and wrong, but everything's exciting. Then you look back a little bit later at things you did, maybe you can take responsibility for them, maybe you can't. It’s not like my diary, it’s not my last confession, but they've made pretty vivid songs, to my ear. I'm really proud of the band in the way they've realised them with no concession to the circumstances. A lot of the music I heard in the early months of people not being out there playing sounded a little bit defeated, in a defensive crouch, that wasn't what I wanted from the music. I wanted the music to feel alive.”

Every Day I Write The Book

The Boy Named If certainly achieves that and it’s housed in a rather fetching package, bedecked with illustrations from the hand of one Eamon Singer, a Costello alias responsible for the cover art of Blood & Chocolate and Look Now, amongst others.

“I have to say it was quite a personal reason why I took to scribbling more avidly in recent times,” Costello explains. ‘My mother got very ill, she had a stroke. I was waiting by her bedside for about five weeks. When you're in a hospital ward and somebody's screaming, somebody's sleeping, somebody’s crying, and somebody’s complaining, you can't take a guitar in there. I wanted to do something to keep myself from worry. And something I could do very quietly, without imposing myself on anybody else, was to just sit there with this electric pencil and scribble away. Gradually, the pictures got more and more ridiculous, macabre, and humorous in some cases. They weren't anything to do with her circumstances, I was thinking about work I was doing.”

This reminiscence sparks a flash of anger. I can’t tell whether it’s directed at me or not.

“When people stridently don't like something, but they don't know where it comes from, that just makes me do it more. That's been my way with music, if people don't like things I do, I'll just do them to one-hundred percent. That's just my nature. Don't pick a fight with me about what I'm thinking, because you don't know what's inside my head. You're not a fucking priest or the Holy Ghost, you don't know my motivation, you don't know what's in my soul. If you want a song to sound different, fucking write it yourself. You can even pick up your own fucking pencil if you don't like this drawing… Fuck off.”

I’m not sure what happened there but Costello seems genuinely upset. I change the subject. Also included within the album/book are short vignettes or ‘fables’, expanding on each lyric. To pick one at random, the writing around ‘The Difference’ made me think that the song’s stabbing takes place on a stage rather than in ‘real life’. Costello explains their inclusion in the first place.

“You picked an unusual one as an example. First of all, the reason they exist, is because I wanted there to be a physical object that people could hold in their hands. When we were originally planning the release of this record, there was, as you know, a shortage of vinyl. A vinyl record would at least be 12" by 12" and there would be space for some illustrations. I was told that there wouldn't be any vinyl, the release would be a little plastic thing with the CD, but mostly would be the stream and downloads. We all, I'm sure, like the accessibility of being able to call up a number on your computer, and hear it right away. The downside is any suggestion of a program in which you're supposed to initially consider music is very fractured by that delivery. It's like you toss the songs into the stream, and then they just float away, like a bunch of sticks. There isn't any way to hold the centre of the story Having arrived at the idea that the songs were a collection of stories, children's stories or people acting like children, and having gone so far as to draw the cover, with a story within a picture, I thought, why don't we just make a book. Very quickly, I wrote these short stories. What happened immediately before the song started playing? What happens immediately after? What's happened in the background when this is happening in the foreground and vice versa?”

"There's some agreement between the lyric and the stories. In other cases, there's other implications in the story, or even the illustration can suggest something, like with 'What If I Can't Give You Anything But Love' there's a big clue to what that might be representing in the picture of the big green guy with a knife. Take out of that whatever you want. You've got to leave somewhere for the listener's imagination to go even if you're given all of these bits of information - song, story and drawing. Some people see the drawings as just decorative. Other people might look at them and go, Oh, does that have any connection to this song or this story? Depends on who you are or what your curiosity is."

“You don't have to see the story book to enjoy the songs, you also don't have to know that ‘The Difference’ is based on a line from Paweł Pawlikowski's film Cold War but it is, as was ‘I Do’ on Clockface. We had a discussion about the possibility of adapting that film for the stage and although these songs are not from a score, they were me working out how some of the implications of scenes and lines in that story might work in song. ‘The Difference’ comes from a specific line in the film, you'll find it if you watch it again. Sometimes a line in Shakespeare or a line in the Bible can inspire a song. ‘Watching the Detectives’ doesn't specifically refer to a film noir, but it's obviously about somebody becoming very absorbed with detective film or detective show, whatever you imagine it to be.”

“I've always taken cues in songs from unusual sources, sometimes they're experience, sometimes they're observation. I can think of maybe five songs on Brutal Youth that have either titles, images, or whole narratives that come from paintings. I didn't say that at the time because people would have thought I was out of my mind. That wouldn't have lined up with, ‘Oh, he's back with the old band and aren't they rocking?’. That was easier to say than actually listen to what songs are about. Some people are lazy and just want an easy explanation for anything that happens. You know that's true.”

For The Stars

Brutal Youth is one of my favourite Costello records, partly because it rocks, but I take his point. Elvis is still talking so I’m not going to stop him. Sticking with song writing I point at the scene in The Beatles: Get Back where McCartney, who Costello is no stranger to, pulls ‘Get Back’ out of the air and ask if it ever works like that for him.

“It can do, it can do. I had the structure of these songs pretty clear. Steve actually complained, because of the way it worked - we didn't all play simultaneously at any time, because it's not possible over distance. It was mostly me and Pete. It might be a slightly contentious thing to say that the rhythm section of The Attractions, in some senses, was the words and the drums, because the other two guys were playing kinda decoration all the time. Yeah, they locked in as a proper rhythm section, all four of us would, just playing relentlessly on something, but some key agreement in a lot of the records I made with Pete is the flow of words, and a lot more words than many people use. It only works because we're in some kind of relationship, and here we started with that. Steve, when we sent him a three man version of, say, 'Penelope Halfpenny', said, 'What the hell do I play on this? You finished this!' I think what I find attractive about Steve's contribution to this record is he was forced to play ingeniously inside what had already been laid down and therefore we got different things because he's so used to leading our group, and why would you not have him lead, he's got so much imagination? It does no harm to do it a different way now and again, and of course there are songs like 'The Man You Love To Hate' where he just took over and there's no room for anybody else. It's just him, which is great because he can do that. Listen hard to what he's doing even on something like 'Magnificent Hurt', which is a pretty simple song. Listen to the way he plays inside that funny dissonant solo that I play. It's really smart. And that's that trust again, it comes from years of understanding how we think."

"I know that you can will a song into existence," he says, remembering the question. "I found that comforting that even the Beatles have to just sing nonsense words sometimes until the real words emerge. You've got the rhythm, you've got the cadence, the melody, you've got everything but the sense, and sometimes that’s the last thing to appear. Sometimes it’s the first thing and you could propose two or three different tunes to carry that idea. There is no hard and fast rule. If I knew how to do it, I’d do it all day long, and I'd be writing songs for Adele. Some people talk about it as a muse thing, sometimes it feels trance like, and sometimes it's just work. Because these songs were written close together, there was obviously some connection. But I didn't sit down and say I'm going to write a concept record like a Yes album. It wasn't that kind of thinking at all.”

Thank God for that, says I, and Elvis nods in agreement. There’s a reissue of that Painted From Memory collaboration with Burt Bacharach mentioned earlier due this year. Again, I make a mistake, and refer to it as an anniversary release.

“Yeah, well, it’s not an anniversary,” Costello corrects me. “I don't understand anniversaries myself. You celebrate your birthday, you celebrate your wedding anniversary, because it's the day that you remember. I was at my mother's house the week before last, closing it up really. She passed in January. That's a melancholy assignment, but it's one where you're looking at the documents, the records, the little clippings, the photographs, that illustrate a life. The Wednesday was the tenth anniversary of my Dad's passing but I missed him just as much the day before and the day after, it wasn't really like a heavier day. It was only a heavy day if I agreed that it was and those two things colliding wasn't the greatest thing in the world for the spirit. It was something you have to face and it's logical in its progression... Remind me of the question again?”

I was asking about working with Bacharach.

"Oh, Burt. Yeah."

Costello seemed only too happy to expound on their relationship and work at length, using it as a jumping off point to somewhat explain his approach to music and song writing. The clock had now gone out the window so I just sat back and enjoyed listening to the man talk.

“Burt’s effect on me as a listener goes right back to Perry Como singing ‘Magic Moments’ on television in the 50s. I can remember that very vividly. I really have a very strong memory of hearing Cilla sing ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’ and not knowing why it made me feel peculiar. The music's really odd. You probably know it's written in different time signatures, and for a slow song, it has this weird effect on you, because it breaks out of metre. As I got older, I could appreciate that sort of carnal or sensual implication of so many of Burt's songs. There are songs I could point at, before Burt and I ever met, where I was attempting to speak in that kind of language, with differing degrees of success. Maybe it's better that I couldn't get closer to the model and I just came up with my own song like ‘Accidents Will Happen’. I remember thinking, ‘that’s sort of like Burt’. It doesn't sound remotely like him, but in my mind, it was indebted to him in some way.”

"People just didn't have so much of a manifesto for everything they did thirty or forty years ago, we weren't asked such difficult questions or asked to explain ourselves in those ways, and even less in Burt's time. Nobody ever questioned Burt about the inside of the music. They just accepted that he was a great composer. And he wrote for tremendous singers like Dionne Warwick."

“From the time we've written together, we wrote an album, it was reinterpreted by Bill Frisell [The Sweetest Punch, which also features the great Cassandra Wilson], a bunch of people recorded ‘God Give Me Strength’ [commissioned for the 1996 movie Grace Of My Heart, and one of Costello’s greatest achievements], and we were approached to write a musical based on it. We worked on it for three or four years. It got as far as the workshop performance, but it was clear that the new songs that we'd written and the old songs never really cohered, and the story that the writers wrote kind of competed with the songs, to be honest, I think they fought a fight that they couldn't win. That sounds a bit arrogant that there was more narrative in some of the lyrics than there was in the story. So it never was gonna work."

"Those were some of the songs that Burt led The Imposters in the studio on Look Now, that was an amazing session - 'Look Now' and 'Photographs Can Lie' - and there were other songs that we'd written together which The Imposters and I recorded with Steve Nieve playing, like 'He's Given Me Things'. There's still more, we were asked to write a score for Austin Powers and he wrote some fucking beautiful tunes. I wrote all of the music for 'Stripping Paper' on Look Now for that Painted From Memory musical. I gave that song to Burt, and he said, ‘that's finished, I'm not gonna add anything’. That's a pretty big compliment.”

"I think we will put a record which presents the original songs, and some sort of version of what could have been added to that, ranging from studio versions to really great vocal and piano demos, not just my voice but some other singers who did them at the time, what we call production demos, really amazing performances of some of these unheard songs."

“The best thing of all was in Capitol Studios, maybe two months ago, with Burt and a thirty-piece orchestra,” he continues with a grin. “It's like the dream, you're in the studio, like Cilla doing 'Alfie',you're trying to sing this difficult song with a conductor - Vince Mendoza did the orchestrations - and this killer band, very different from The Imposters, much more Burt's choice of people. I wanted that, I wanted it to be his voice in the music. You're in the booth with a little chair that Sinatra used to lean on! Capitol is really a place to go to. I've only ever done a couple of things or mostly watched my wife record there. But we did The New Basement Tapes [recordings of late sixties Dylan lyrics set to new music] there, and I did a song with Roger McGuinn [the former Byrd covered 'You Bowed Down' on 1990's Back From Rio with Elvis helping out on backing vocals] many years ago. When you walk down the hallway, it's like, get ready, because it's [pointing at imaginary pictures on an imaginary wall] Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Sinatra, Gene Vincent, it's intimidating. I suppose people feel the same way about Abbey Road and probably feel the same about Windmill Lane, there's history in there and that's something that can spook you out or lift you towards doing a good job. That's why people go to Muscle Shoals, they want to get some of that flavour. It was really something.”

Despite his own stature, Elvis has still got to be pinching himself in that situation.

“Burt was standing up at the board, looking at the score and I knew what was coming. The voice comes on the talk back, [breathless Burt burr] "Elvis, you're not singing the right melody at bar 12." I just got one note wrong in the melody and he's heard it and then he's like, "Vince, We gotta really pay attention to downbeat at 61." Nothing escapes his notice, every single time I've been on stage with him, he's the same. It's not like he's unreasonably demanding, he's just got incredible focus. Listen to those records he orchestrated and partly produced at Sceptre, how incredibly focused every part is in the orchestra and in the rhythm section, everything is serving the story. It's at a level that really probably very few groups other than the Beatles, in a very different kind of form, have. It's never less than it needs to be. Most everybody else's recording, there's something that's a bit more blurred. There's only a couple of people that you could literally write that orchestration down and it will be like classical music, in its attention to be what it is. People don't really have access to that, because they're making Lego now by comparison. Two bar phrases, end on end, twelve people to write a song - great if you like it, but Burt can write the whole thing, and the orchestration. The only thing he doesn't do is write words, that's my job.”

Beyond Belief

Even at this stage, Costello’s still learning from people like Bacharach.

“Christ yeah. I'm not feeling sorry for myself but I left school at seventeen, which is later than my mother who left school at fourteen, and sold records from then on. I've worked at trying to be a musician ever since, I never really could do any other job. I did do other jobs, like we all do to pay the rent, but I didn't have any formal education beyond that, and I stopped paying attention much earlier. I'm not book learned in any way in terms of literary things and I don't have any formal musical education. I took some music lessons from Michael McGlynn [Irish composer and founder of Anúna, who worked with Costello and The Chieftains on ‘Long Journey Home’] when I was forty, to break this bloody mental block I had about musical notation. Once I was away, I was able to write and imagine things, I could communicate with people that I really wanted to work with, like The Brodsky Quartet. Little details in the music was escaping, because I didn't know how to write them down accurately, so it was very necessary. I was very grateful to Michael for being so patient. He started out trying to teach me piano. That was impossible, because I'm so left handed. If I could have two left hands, I'd be alright. This hand doesn't really do much, but you get what you get. All of those things look like some scheme, and for some people it's, 'Oh, you're trying to make yourself look smart doing that!' That's only because they have an orthodox view about music that's begins and ends with rock. I don't even like square rock, gimme rock and roll. After a certain point, I dial it out and I'm listening to The Temptations. I want syncopation. Your imagination goes, ‘I want more complex harmony’. It doesn't mean I have to only write that because I love three chord songs, but if it's only going to be this narrow church, that's not what I do.”

“Whether you can command it all, or have it serve you is another matter, but at least be aware of it and don't talk down to it, because there's beautiful things happening just out of your view. And that's why I would always be anxious to do anything that's a new adventure, because you come out of it knowing something you didn't know when you went in. Burt is a perfect example, there was a lot to learn from observation and out of it we wrote a bunch of really great songs, which I never would have dreamed of doing. When he was playing piano from Marlena Dietrich in 1963, when my dad [Ross McManus, with Joe Loss and his Orchestra] was on the Royal Variety Show with The Beatles, who would have thought that I would write songs with two of the people on the bill? It sounds like a grandiose thing to say, but do you suppose I could have ever dreamed that in my wildest imagination at nine years old? And that's actually what happened.”

At this point, the understandably exasperated record company lady, Rainar, interrupts our call. I throw my hands up in apology and she shoots me a look like I’ve just dropped a piano on her cat. Can’t blame her, mind. I say my thanks to Costello, and take the chance to thank him for all those great records that I’ve been listening to for years. “Not at all, really good to speak with you,” says our man, “and thanks for your questions.”

Honestly, I had loads of them.
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
Hawksmoor
Posts: 625
Joined: Mon Jun 16, 2003 2:51 pm

Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

sweetest punch wrote:https://www.hotpress.com/music/punch-th ... 22891710[b]

Punch The Clock: An Interview With Elvis Costello[/b]
I say my thanks to Costello, and take the chance to thank him for all those great records that I’ve been listening to for years. “Not at all, really good to speak with you,” says our man, “and thanks for your questions.”

Honestly, I had loads of them.
I love that. It's a great interview anyway, but presenting it in a way whereby he describes what he was thinking at each point, and which question he would ask next, even down to his unforced errors...it's cute, and amusing, and a nice way to frame the interview.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

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https://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/el ... le-music-1

ELVIS COSTELLO TELLS ELTON JOHN ABOUT HIS NEW ALBUM ‘THE BOY NAMED IF’ ON ROCKET HOUR ON APPLE MUSIC 1

Elvis Costello joins Elton John's Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1 this weekend to discuss his new album 'The Boy Named If'. He tells Elton about recording the album remotely from his fellow band members, making a conscious effort not to become "complacent", his tour plans for this year and more.

Elton John Tells Elvis Costello He “Can’t Stop Playing” His New Album ‘A Boy Called If’…

Well, you did me a great favour by sending me the album way before it came out, and there's so much energy in this record, which you've made lots of records with lots of energy, but you haven't made a record like this for a long, long time. You're one of the artists that I love because you always try and do something different… And so you're one of these artists that just does what you want to do, but this record is just so supercharged, it's like having an electric shock, for me, and I just love it. I can't stop playing it.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About Band Members Recording The Album Remotely…

I think this kind of music really benefited from not being able to see our ugly faces while we were playing. Nothing put us off. I know that Pete won't want me to say that, but there he was down in his basement, as he is every day. You know what drummers are like, they want to keep ready for that call to the stage. He has his old Gretsch kit that he played on the very first record that we did together, this year's model. He installed that in his basement, now his practice kit, and he really couldn't sound any more comfortable. And there is something to be said for the rhythm section of our songs together, being my voice and his drums. I know the bass player is playing his conventional role, but there's something about that lock between my singing and his drums. And because we had that as a starting place, everything else just fell into its right place.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music That Album Is About Wanting To Be Connected...

Well, I think it's the sound of people wanting to get back connected with each other. We have had 45 years together and you know, because you've had long term working relationships, creative relationships, you could become complacent about it. And also, I think there is something when you go in and you try to keep it to the straight line between you and the listener that you can sometimes get in your own way in an attempt to make it. And there's something about us being separated while recording this, I think we all did our best thing for the song. The song was right at the centre. They listened to the words.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About The Way Each Band Member Contributes To The Record…

As you know, records are often an accumulation of separate moments and people lose sight of that. There is something that people think if it was all done in the room together, that's more real. Well, sometimes it's real and sometimes it's just messy because you haven't quite worked out the arrangement. But with two of us, Steve, and Pete, and myself have played together on and off for 45 years, and Davey now I think has earned the right not to be called anybody's deputy after 20 years. I mean he's got his own approach to the bass, he's also a great singer so you hear his voice. Where I blend my voice with myself and then with him on top, that's a sound which, of course we didn't have. Nobody in the first group could sing, except me, and that was even a toss of a coin.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About His Tour Plans For 2022…

But I really did enjoy doing it and we've planned the songs out on the stage. And you know what it's like, because you've been out there recently, you know what it feels like to be back out in front of people. We did 22 dates, we got in that little window of opportunity in October, did 22 dates with Charlie Sexton joining us, and that way I could really, a lot of the time, just be singing and didn't always have to fill every place because Charlie was covering it. And then when we did play together, it was a different thing. So the songs are going to change shape as we take them back out on the road in June in England and, here's an exclusive, the US in August. You're the first that knows that. So we're going out in the US in August.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

It's weird. I play the LP now and I can absolutely hear that the backbone of each song is Elvis' voice and Pete's drums, with the bass added and then Steve coming in last to 'decorate' with the keyboards.

Or...do I just hear it that way because Elvis has told us half-a-dozen times that that was the sequence? :)
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by verbal gymnastics »

I’ve certainly said that in a WhatsApp group (and here I think - I’ve had a lot of discussions about the album). Perhaps you got it from me subconsciously first :lol:
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

Hawksmoor wrote:It's weird. I play the LP now and I can absolutely hear that the backbone of each song is Elvis' voice and Pete's drums, with the bass added and then Steve coming in last to 'decorate' with the keyboards.

Or...do I just hear it that way because Elvis has told us half-a-dozen times that that was the sequence? :)
verbal gymnastics wrote:I’ve certainly said that in a WhatsApp group (and here I think - I’ve had a lot of discussions about the album). Perhaps you got it from me subconsciously first :lol:
That's also entirely possible. Do I really feel the way I feel? :)
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware
S13 Ep 2: Elvis Costello
https://play.acast.com/s/tablemanners/s ... iscostello
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

https://audioboom.com/posts/8043373-elv ... n-03-07-22

Elvis Costello: Coolest Conversation 03/07/22

Elvis Costello is the Mighty Manfred's guest this week! Elvis is back with his 32nd studio album, "A Boy Named If and Other Children's Stories" which features our Coolest Song in the World this Week, "Farewell Ok."
Join the Mighty Manfred and Elvis Costello for this week's Coolest Conversation, presented by Hard Rock
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.songlines.co.uk/news/songli ... is-out-now

SONGLINES APRIL 2022 ISSUE IS OUT NOW!

Interviews with Ibibio Sound Machine, Knight & Spiers, Elvis Costello and Imarhan; a look at the new generation of Viking noise-bringers; a Beginner's Guide to Le Vent du Nord, plus two free CD compilations with every copy

The April 2022 issue (#176) of Songlines is now on sale. This issue’s cover stars are Afro-funk eight-piece Ibibio Sound Machine, who speak to us about the importance of language and positivity. Other features include folk duo Knight & Spiers speaking on their latest collaboration; The Rumba Kings, a new documentary tracing the history of Congolese rumba; a look at the Viking craze recapturing the hearts of Nordic musicians; Touareg rockers Imarhan on their new album and studio; a My World interview with British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello; a Beginner’s Guide to Québécois group Le Vent du Nord, who are celebrating 20 years together; plus all the latest news, concert reviews, CD, book and world cinema reviews.

This month’s exclusive Top of the World album (available as a CD and download) includes Park Jiha, Talisk and Tanya Tagaq, plus an extra five bonus tracks featuring music from KOG (Kweku of Ghana), The Chieftains with Elvis Costello and more. The issue also comes with a bonus CD of contemporary Balkan tuneage.

You can buy this issue via Amazon or (even better!) subscribe to get this and future issues right to your door as soon as they’re published. We also offer digital subscriptions that gives you access to every one of our 176 issues from 1999 to 2022… and beyond.
Last edited by sweetest punch on Thu Mar 10, 2022 4:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

sweetest punch wrote:This month’s exclusive Top of the World album (available as a CD and download) includes Park Jiha, Talisk and Tanya Tagaq, plus an extra five bonus tracks featuring music from KOG (Kweku of Ghana), The Chieftains with Elvis Costello and more. The issue also comes with a bonus CD of contemporary Balkan tuneage.
I'm assuming that's 'Long Journey Home'?
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.lecho.be/culture/musique/th ... s/10373100

"The Boy Named If" d'Elvis Costello, aussi parfait qu'un Greatest Hits
Elvis Costello & The Imposters livrent "The Boy Named If", un nouvel album riche et soigné.

Dès l’intro twistique de "Farewell, OK", l’on comprend que la partie est gagnée: Elvis Costello, la soixantaine bien tassée, retrouve sa voix d’angry young man de "This Year Model" et l’inspiration rock pop accrocheuse d’un "Spike". À ce début endiablé succède "The Boy Named If", titre éponyme de l’album, au tempo certes plus lent, mais à l’orchestration toujours aussi riche et surtout au refrain également imparable, tandis que "Penelope Halfpenny" et son histoire à la "Eleanor Rigby" renvoie inévitablement à "Veronica" dans sa construction et son chorus catchy.

Est-ce parce qu’il vient de ressortir "Armed Forces" millésimé 79 en box de luxe voici quelques mois? En tout cas, Declan MacManus semble avoir profité de ce bain de jouvence pour replonger avec délice dans cette source pas encore tarie de l’inspiration juvénile ("The Difference", "What If I Can’t Give You Anything But Love"), en contrastant les ambiances sur les treize petites fables, vignettes qu’il imagine qui sont parfois croonesques comme "Paint The Red Roses Blue", quasi nocturne comme son nom l’indique dans le cas de "Mr Crescent", flirtant avec un ragtime sur "Trick Out The Truth" et côtoient trois candidats singles épatants: "Mistook Me For a Friend", "The Death of Magic Thinking", "The Man You Love To Hate".

L’impression finale est celle d’un best of rêvé tant ce CD magnifique à des airs par sa perfection d’un album de Greatest Hits. De l’art de faire une compilation en un seul album!

Note de L'Echo: 5 stars
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

sweetest punch wrote:https://www.songlines.co.uk/news/songli ... is-out-now

SONGLINES APRIL 2022 ISSUE IS OUT NOW!

Interviews with Ibibio Sound Machine, Knight & Spiers, Elvis Costello and Imarhan; a look at the new generation of Viking noise-bringers; a Beginner's Guide to Le Vent du Nord, plus two free CD compilations with every copy

The April 2022 issue (#176) of Songlines is now on sale. This issue’s cover stars are Afro-funk eight-piece Ibibio Sound Machine, who speak to us about the importance of language and positivity. Other features include folk duo Knight & Spiers speaking on their latest collaboration; The Rumba Kings, a new documentary tracing the history of Congolese rumba; a look at the Viking craze recapturing the hearts of Nordic musicians; Touareg rockers Imarhan on their new album and studio; a My World interview with British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello; a Beginner’s Guide to Québécois group Le Vent du Nord, who are celebrating 20 years together; plus all the latest news, concert reviews, CD, book and world cinema reviews.

This month’s exclusive Top of the World album (available as a CD and download) includes Park Jiha, Talisk and Tanya Tagaq, plus an extra five bonus tracks featuring music from KOG (Kweku of Ghana), The Chieftains with Elvis Costello and more. The issue also comes with a bonus CD of contemporary Balkan tuneage.

You can buy this issue via Amazon or (even better!) subscribe to get this and future issues right to your door as soon as they’re published. We also offer digital subscriptions that gives you access to every one of our 176 issues from 1999 to 2022… and beyond.
https://www.songlines.co.uk/features/el ... -and-music

ELVIS COSTELLO – MY WORLD: “WE NEED TO GET FREE OF BEING SO IMPRESSED WITH OUR OWN CONTINUITY AND MUSIC”
By Russ Slater

The British singer-songwriter tells Russ Slater all about his disparate musical tastes, from country to Ethiopian music and almost everything in between. Photography by Mark Seliger

“I just think we need to get free from self. We need to get free of being so impressed with our own continuity and music,” says Elvis Costello heatedly. With Costello, this was a necessary evolution after being marked as part of a nascent UK punk scene following his debut album in 1977. “I was actually touring England in 1977 and people couldn’t give a fuck about punk music in most places. That was just something made up by journalists in London. I’ve got pictures of the audience in 1977 in the smaller towns in England and it looks like an audience of Status Quo fans.” Costello quickly shook the punk tag, and the New Wave tag that followed it, his curiosity and need to wrangle free from his own continuity, ensuring that it has been nigh on impossible to pigeonhole him ever since. There have been operas, ballet scores, jazz instrumentals, a surprise hit single with Charles Aznavour’s ‘She’, high-profile collaborations with Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Allen Toussaint, and so much more.

Yet, despite looking disparate on the face of it, I find that so many of Costello’s projects have their roots in his earliest musical discoveries, when he would find “little hints of other worlds of music filtering through the very small amount of radio, or the record shop where they said ‘you need that record’.” Country music had a pull, discovering the likes of Johnny Cash (“he stood out because of the way he sang”), Hank Williams, George Jones and Gram Parsons, and paying tribute with an album of country covers in 1981. He would also duet with Jones and Cash, and regularly return to Nashville, with a story about working with bluegrass musicians beginning, in typically Costello fashion, somewhere completely different. In this case, it was a chamber opera he wrote in Denmark about Hans Christian Andersen’s unrequited love for opera singer Jenny Lind and the latter’s PT Barnum-promoted tour of the US.

“When I say it now, it sounds completely nuts”, he remembers, “but it gave me an opportunity to talk about unrequited love, and the debate about abolition [because] Barnum and eventually Andersen were drawn into it.” Songs from the opera would later show up, albeit in a very different style, on 2009’s Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. “I took those songs written for the opera house, and I put them in Jack Clement’s studio in Nashville and we recorded a couple of songs I’d written for Johnny Cash, a song for an adaptation of All the King’s Men, about Huey Long. They were rooted in American stories, so, to me, it didn’t seem contradictory to be using American musicians, people that have grown out of the American folk tradition,” alluding to the fact that he worked with a number of bluegrass musicians. “Well, people say bluegrass because you’ve got a dobro and a mandolin,” he replies, “but they’ve all played hundreds of other things as well. Jerry Douglas is a master musician.”

“‘The Miranda Syndrome’ is about the way dominant cultures regard others with a sense of novelty”

Along with radio and record shops, the young Costello got his early music fix from his father Ross MacManus, a singer and trumpeter of Irish descent. It was while looking through his dad’s collection that he found the records by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller that informed a love for jazz and New Orleans music, as well as one by The Chieftains, who he would record with in 1991 and again in 1998 when he sang the theme to Long Journey Home, a TV series about the Irish American experience. “I love that song”, he tells me. “I got to sing that with them one St Patrick’s night. Paddy [Moloney] didn’t ever dream little, so he told me, ‘let’s go to Carnegie Hall with the Notre Dame [Folk Choir], and let’s do it like it’s the national anthem’… That was the conceit of that song, it was supposed to be the national anthem of the Irish in America.”

It’s through his father that we can also chart a path into Latin music: “As a child, I went to the dancehall with my father. We went to the Hammersmith Palais and there was the Joe Loss Orchestra [who his father sang with], who were a 16-piece radio dance band playing Latin, they would do tango or a paso doble.”

Costello contributed two songs to Rubén Blades’ first English language album, Nothing but the Truth (1988), one of which was ‘The Miranda Syndrome’, “a satirical song about the way in which all dominant cultures regard others with a sense of novelty. I was referring to Carmen Miranda. If she’d stood still and just sung without a bunch of fruit on her head, would people have made her a movie presence?” Later, he sang with Bajofondo Tango Club, La Santa Cecilia, Fito Páez and worked with La Marisoul on ‘Cinco Minutos Con Vos’, from a 2013 album with The Roots, Wise Up Ghost. Which leads us to last year’s Spanish Model, an album on which Costello and his producer Sebastian Krys gave the master tapes for his 1978 album, This Year’s Model, to some of Latin music’s biggest stars, who then recorded new Spanish-language cover versions. It briefly saw Costello become an unlikely TikTok phenomenon: “I don’t even understand how that works or what it’s supposed to mean, but the record company has pointed out that there are young women, influencers, dancing around to [Sebastian] Yatra’s version of ‘Big Tears’.” Search for the song on TikTok and you will find countless videos of young Latinas choosing their day’s outfit to the track.

Our conversation digresses into Ethiopian music (“I happened to be in an Ethiopian restaurant and they were playing this incredible music. It was Ketema Makonnen… I went looking for his records and eventually found them in Axum”) and The Paths of Pain, a new compilation of 60s Ecuadorian music (“I thought it was so beautiful and honestly, I think it’s a wonderful thing when somebody puts the time in to collect things together like that… otherwise, it’s a story we might not know”), before returning to the recently-passed Paddy Moloney: “One of the beautiful things about Paddy was the way in which he could go to countries anywhere in the world and he’d find a musical connection to [the local] music and would do the scholarship on it. [The Chieftains] created all these bridges between different… well, in the end, it’s shared subject matter, or a shared spirit of music that really unites us across a barrier of language, or some political boundary.” These are words that could just as easily be applied to Costello himself.

Hear ‘Long Journey Home (Anthem)’ by The Chieftains with Elvis Costello on the free CD included with the April 2022 issue of Songlines magazine.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sweetest punch »

https://playlist.worldcafe.org/world-ca ... -costello/

WORLD CAFE PLAYLIST FOR 03/15/2022

Elvis Costello joins host Raina Douris

Elvis Costello is host Raina Douris’ guest on the next World Cafe. We’ll hear some of the songs from Elvis’ new album, The Boy Named If. And Elvis tells stories about growing up in the flight path of Heathrow Airport, discovering the liberation that playing the guitar brought him, and saying goodbye to his mother before she died last year.

*Elvis Costello “You Bowed Down” Recorded Live For The World Cafe Started (*Optional Song)
Elvis Costello & The Imposters “Magnificent Hurt” The Boy Named If
Elvis Costello & The Imposters “Penelope Halfpenny” The Boy Named If
Elvis Costello & The Imposters “The Death Of Magic Thinking” The Boy Named If
Elvis Costello & The Imposters “Paint The Red Rose Blue” The Boy Named If
Linda Ronstadt “Alison” Living In The USA
Dave Edmunds “Girls Talk” Repeat When Necessary
Duran Duran “Watching The Detectives” Thank You

Magdalena Bay “Secrets (Your Fire)” Mercurial World
Vampire Weekend “Mansard Roof” Vampire Weekend
Violent Femmes “Blister In The Sun” Violent Femmes

Hour Two
*Sheryl Crow “Tell Me When It’s Over” Threads
Buffalo Nichols “Back On Top” Buffalo Nichols
Chris Whitley “Poison Girl” Living With The Law
Khruangbin & Leon Bridges “B-Side” Texas Moon EP
R.E.M. “Leaving New York” Around The Sun
Tierra Whack “Heaven” R&B?
Stevie Wonder “Heaven Is 10 Zillion Light Years Away” Fulfillingness’ First Finale
Kathleen Edwards “One More Song The Radio Won’t Like” Failer
The War On Drugs “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” I Don’t Live Here Anymore
David Byrne With Yo La Tengo “Who Has Seen The Wind” Ocean Child” Songs Of Yoko Ono
Nada Surf “Always Love” The Weight Is A Gift
The Felice Brothers “Jazz On The Autobahn” From Dreams To Dust
Margo Price “Letting Me Down” That’s How Rumors Get Started
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

Nice review. By this...'The Boy Named If is basically the rock album Elvis Costello didn’t make for the better part of fifteen years' I assume we're taking Momofuku to be his last 'rock album'. That's a reasonable stance, although I think National Ransom, Wise Up Ghost and Look Now might have a slight quibble with it, depending on how you want to define a 'rock album'. Plus, of course, Elvis continues to be very disdainful of 'rock music', maintaining his stance that he makes 'rock'n'roll' LPs.

Personally, I have to say that, three months in, I'm still blown away by this LP. I still play some or all of it every day, and it still isn't disappointing on any level. Our excited early talk of it being his best LP might have been slightly hyperbolic, but not by much - not by much at all. For me, it's easily top 5. I'd certainly put it up against TYM and Imperial Bedroom to see how the fight would play out.

I might - in a mad moment - even put it up against my beloved Get Happy! but that's a weighty decision for me and will need a lot of thought.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Arbogast »

"Our excited early talk of it being his best LP might have been slightly hyperbolic, but not by much "


You people are out of your gourds! It's a good record, I really like it, but c'mon now....
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by sulky lad »

Hawksmoor wrote:
Nice review. By this...'The Boy Named If is basically the rock album Elvis Costello didn’t make for the better part of fifteen years' I assume we're taking Momofuku to be his last 'rock album'. That's a reasonable stance, although I think National Ransom, Wise Up Ghost and Look Now might have a slight quibble with it, depending on how you want to define a 'rock album'. Plus, of course, Elvis continues to be very disdainful of 'rock music', maintaining his stance that he makes 'rock'n'roll' LPs.

Personally, I have to say that, three months in, I'm still blown away by this LP. I still play some or all of it every day, and it still isn't disappointing on any level. Our excited early talk of it being his best LP might have been slightly hyperbolic, but not by much - not by much at all. For me, it's easily top 5. I'd certainly put it up against TYM and Imperial Bedroom to see how the fight would play out.

I might - in a mad moment - even put it up against my beloved Get Happy! but that's a weighty decision for me and will need a lot of thought.
Exactly !Sorry Argobast but I agree totally with Hawks here . Maybe it’s an Anglo Saxon thing ? :roll: :roll: :wink:
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Hawksmoor »

Arbogast wrote:"Our excited early talk of it being his best LP might have been slightly hyperbolic, but not by much "


You people are out of your gourds! It's a good record, I really like it, but c'mon now....
Well...I don't know. I think those of us who are seriously into popular music - listening to it, collecting it, having 'favourite artists', all that - still (often) harbour a subconscious thing about 'the earliest are incomparably the best'. Partly because - understandably - it was often those early recordings that made us fall in love with a particular artist.

How could Bruce Springsteen possibly make a record in 2022 that could compare with Born to Run? How could Paul McCartney make a record in 2022 that could compare with A Hard Day's Night? OK, I'm plucking random examples, and you may not be a Bruce Springsteen fan or a Beatles fan, I don't know. But you get the idea. The tendency to regard the early work as somehow unassailable.

But why not? And if anyone could buck that trend, it has to be Elvis Costello. Maybe he has made his best LP at 67, and 30+ LPs into the game. We can never properly imagine alternative universes (or they wouldn't be alternative :)). But I do wonder how we'd be feeling about TBNI if it had been released in 1978...
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by verbal gymnastics »

I love The Boy Named If but I couldn’t have appreciated it in 1978.

One of the beauties about listening to artists with friends who do the same is that, to paraphrase Elvis, you will love what others consider to be his worst record.
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by wardo68 »

Hawksmoor wrote:
Nice review. By this...'The Boy Named If is basically the rock album Elvis Costello didn’t make for the better part of fifteen years' I assume we're taking Momofuku to be his last 'rock album'.
For me, it's easily top 5. I'd certainly put it up against TYM and Imperial Bedroom to see how the fight would play out. I might - in a mad moment - even put it up against my beloved Get Happy! but that's a weighty decision for me and will need a lot of thought.
Thanks Hawk. Yes, I consider Momo the last rock album. Ransom was an extension of the Sugarcanes, WUG was funk, Look Now was pop, Clockface more jazz. All good, but I do like the rock...
My top 5 are GH, Trust, Bedroom, KOA, and B&C, followed by TYM, AF, Mighty, Juliet and North, so I'm clearly inconsistent.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by Newspaper Pane »

Arbogast wrote:"Our excited early talk of it being his best LP might have been slightly hyperbolic, but not by much "


You people are out of your gourds! It's a good record, I really like it, but c'mon now....
Agreed. It's a very solid record, but not close to top 5. I actually prefer Hey Clockface, and possibly Look Now depending on my mood.
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Re: The Boy Named If, new album by Elvis & The Imposters, January 14, 2022

Post by jardine »

This always puts me in mine of an old habit I had going back to 1965 [me 14 going on 15] of putting Beatle songs on a list with a top ten typed with the red-ink ribbon [i still have a couple in a box somewhere!]. And now, what am i to do with North? The White Album? Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest? and Dragonnewwarmmountain? Who's on first?

I still want to "top five" things, but that itch has settled now a lot. It used to satisfy something. It used to be a kind of sorting mechanism, I suppose. For me, it has come down to -- is this worth spending my life over, using up some of my fading hearing and attention? If I may say so, back in the day, The Moody Blues served their function and I'm glad of it in retrospect, but i don't need to be listening to them anymore. they are no longer 'on the list'.... They didn't "last." Anyway, morning babble from the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Just my way of absorbing the backs and forths.
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