The template of the music
Elvis Costello makes with collaborators The Roots on WISE UP GHOST is a hodgepodge of influences - James Brown drumming, Parliament fuzz
guitars, Stevie Wonder funky wurlitzers and electric pianos, and plenty of
strings and horns. The result is Curtis
Mayfield less gritty but harder.
Costello lyrically seems
especially inspired. His lyrics are not
as much as elliptical here as directly angry pointed at power, wealth,
inequities in life. Probably the album’s
weirdest moment is in Stick Out Your Tongue when he recycles the lyrics of
Pills and Soap and Hurry Up Doomsday for the verses and couples them with a new
melody and chorus.
Actually, as strange an idea
as this may sound, this is hardly Costello’s weirdest collaboration when you
consider he’s made albums with Burt Bacharach, Allan Toussaint, and The Brodsky
Quartet. Costello is the ultimate music fan
and he could probably make a good record with anybody these days.
The final word is this feels
like an Elvis Costello record albeit one with a certain set of parameters for
its background musicians. Costello is certainly
not out of his comfort zone here and as I mentioned above he sounds angry and
impassioned on some of the tunes and that’s a good thing.
Also some of his singing on
the slower tunes is gorgeous. Is there
any singer whose voice has aged better than EC?
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