Standing stock-still on stage in finely-cut black suit, a statue of steadfast rock cool, Elvis Costello stared down the crowd through his black shades. Having just finished a mighty and vicious “Radio, Radio”—his fifth encore—he seemed to be saying, “Come on bitches, I dare you to dare me to blow your mind yet again, cuz I’ll do it.”
Of course we took the bait and feverishly rooted him on to a frenzied “The Imposter” and six more encore songs.
Costello’s reputation as a guy more interested in Tin Pan Alley-tinged adult pop collaborations than rock ‘n’ roll—he’s approaching Santana’s rate of collaborations; although none of his suck ass as bad as Santana’s—was erased as he and the Imposters (Attraction keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas with new bassist Davey Faragher) spent 100-minutes tearing though the songwriter’s back pages.
The show was an Elvis-ophile’s dream. Missing that old-guy paunch but breaking a sweat early, Costello opened with “Welcome to the Working Week”—the first cut off his first album—and played as if he was getting paid by the song through ten tracks in 40-minutes including “Lover’s Walk,” “Clubland” and “Beyond Belief.”
At first it seemed Costello’s sweat-beaded brow indicated inevitable exhaustion, instead he was like a tip-top athlete whose perspiration proves he’s just warming up. The first ten songs—none of which were hits—were just prelude to a four-song main set finale and a 12-song encore that just kept going.
“Alibi Factory” elevated the show to transcendence. Costello sung the great tell-off with a mix of vitriol and good humor in front of his unexpected, avant guard guitar licks and Nieve’s violent Theremin and keyboard blips and bleeps. From there he pushed the band into a risky, rewarding space with a chaotic, complex “Watching the Detectives” and a youthful, punchy “Lipstick Vogue” to close the main set.
After thirty seconds offstage Costello returned for the big, organ-propelled ballad “A Man Out of Time” and version of “(I don’t want to go to) Chelsea” that seemed to both lag and rush—one of the show’s only disappointments, the snarl the band approached the song with in ’78 was missed. Costello quickly recovered with “Uncomplicated” and the stare-down-the-crowd fierceness of “Radio, Radio” and “The Impostor.”
For his second encore Costello returned with only an acoustic guitar to do a version of “Alison” twisted enough to thwart would-be singers looking for the originally melody. The show climaxed at a fever pitch with “Pump It Up” and “(What’s so funny ’bout) Peace, Love & Understand” with the added lyrics “Bring the boys back home/Bring ’em back alive.”
Costello will likely team with Burt Bacharach, the Brodsky Quartet or some other adult talent on his next project, but it kicked so much ass to see he’s still got that juvenile rock kid in him. Let’s hope the snotty, cool tike kicks and claws and bites his way free from Costello’s debonair maturity more often.
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