Elvis Costello Fan Forum

A rope leash wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHJbSvidohg

"It's worth asking why NO song since the economic meltdown of 2008 seems to have channeled the rage and frustration on a mass scale. Art is supposed to reflect the times, yet all we seem to get are Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, breathlessly discussed by musical and pop culture critics as if they a...

Erey, in terms of 'layers of meaning' in EC's memoirs: I have no trouble at all with 'layers,' but almost none of EC's readers have discerned any strong structure to that book. It is self-indulgent of an author to expect his readers to read his 600-page tome three times before the putative structur...

"But this raises the question of how a song attains that wider 'canonical' status, outside the narrow circles of an artist's hard-core following. It's comforting to think that time just naturally does its work, sifting wheat from chaff. I'm not so sure about this, though." A great questio...

I must demur also at the idea put forth frequently -- including by no less august a personage than John Foyle -- that the book is like listening to EC tells stories in a pub. Not worthy! Point accepted. I really must try & make time to post a more considered comment on the book. I'm , however, ...

"Elvis has the chance to become truly great, and not simply in the annals of popular music. Jimmy Standing in the Rain/Can you Spare a Dime on the Detour DVD quite literally forced unexpected tears from my eyes." I think I know what you are feeling, A Rope Leash. There are four songs in t...

Forgive my ignorance - I tend not to pay attention to show reviews, etc. - but what is wrong with Elvis? Is he sick, or is his voice simply giving out on him as he ages?

Jack, I share your enjoyment of those vignettes. (Being a big Dylan fan, I was especially amused by that anecdote of these two giants reciting new lyrics to one another over a beer, amidst a tour in which they shared the bill - with Dylan giving EC a sharp look over that great 'tuberculosis' couplet...

I take cwr's point as less about wanting EC to be a song factory, and more about his rather conservative approach to the whole internet thing. And this seems to be right - the youthful EC would have been all over the web as a way of getting his material out there. I'd even be tempted to argue that E...

My copy has a weird defect. The last 150 pages or so are out of place, so that the final chapters appear about 2/3 of the way through the book. :shock: All the content is there, just out of order. I trust that in 100 years my descendants will be able to cash in on Antiques Roadshow. I could have don...

No one here listening to PJ Harvey's "Hope Six Demolition Project?" There is, to my ear, a dip in quality about 1/3 of the way in, but after 2-3 duds it gets back on course, piling powerful song upon powerful song and, by the end, leaving you agog with its sonic and lyrical force. She's no...

The only people collecting live recordings of new songs are hard-core fans. Those people are guaranteed to buy your official release when it comes out, so it's not costing you a dime. If and when the song ends up on YouTube or wherever, that constitutes free advertising (assuming it to be any good)....

That was a great interview - Diana Krall and the Son of Mordecai.

I must say, her singing sounds tremendous on the clips they played. She gets into trouble when she makes weird timing/phrasing decisions - but it sounds like she's staying out of her own way on this.

First of all, while Diana Krall has undeniable charisma and presence, and can certainly tickle the ivories, it's not as though she was ever much of a singer; the whole idea that her work has 'declined' relative to some high point of past excellence sounds more like a standard fan cliché (has there E...

As usual, I came late to this party, after leerily keeping my distance from this project based on my initial aversion to both the concept and 'Married to My Hack.' But I did finally buy the CD at a discount. Having read many positive reviews on this site and elsewhere, I was expecting some strengths...

More obscure Canadian content...Jenn Grant's new album Compostela . I just loved the predecessor to this record, which was called The Beautiful Wild and featured well-crafted songs framed by tastefully baroque production and winsome vocals that both delight and crack the heart. This effort is more s...

First- I do not have the record yet. But that will be rectified. I have been following with pleasure his previews on his blog posts. Over the years since you introduced his music to me I have seen an artist grow. His rhymes are as natural and unforced and muscular as any halfway decent poet and his...

Renegade Canadian hip-hop artist Buck 65's newest, "Neverlove." This finds the artist in a "Euro-pop/Bjork-ish" sort of mood, and also rummaging through the trauma of his own divorce. His gravelly-voiced raps encircle highly melodic, sometimes soaring choruses usually sung by swe...

A nice piece. I don't know if I feel as strongly about it as he does, though. I was never one for albums as a 'single, cohesive statement,' preferring that artists just record a bunch of songs; the artistry in the album then lies in the sequencing and the packaging. The danger in fetishizing the 'al...

Here is what Sasha Frere Jones had to say about the record and Apple dumping into it our Itunes: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sasha-frere-jones/u2s-forgettable-fire :lol: My favourite line in there is "The Apple Watch looks like a Happy Meal prize." :D :D A relentlessly hostile review...

But several of those names are of inferior commercial stature to EC, aren't they? Owl City? The Airborne Toxic Event? I wonder if the decisions were calculated to appeal to a range of very well-defined demographics, and that EC was made redundant because they only had a certain number of slots for p...

Near one hundred views and yet not a single comment. Shameful. Your commentary on the lyric play ['at play'] here requires no forbearance. It is delightful and it rightfully pays a playful homage to the fun aspects of this writer and this particular song. I know of no contemporary song writer, outs...

Ugh- like you lost major interest in this band awhile ago- they seem to be hanging on to hang on. Well, why was Achtung Baby so brilliant? Because the band had discovered a new sound and because Bono had developed new lyrical themes (moving away from abstract cause-mongering and sloganeering toward...

I'm listening to the new U2 album thrust upon my computer by the good people at iTunes. (This, of course, is the only way I and millions of others would bother with an album from a band that has basically been tired since All That You Can't Leave Behind ). It seems solid enough...no new ideas, surpr...

Much of the craft - and fun - in a pop lyric consists in the variations and games the author plays with its central conceit. Mr. Costello has a gift for this (think of the numerous turns through which he steers the phrase 'Almost Blue'); and it's an especially important art when a song's origins cle...