Look Now , October 2018

Pretty self-explanatory
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millaa
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by millaa »

My gut feeling is these tracks aren't on the release, but maybe some kind of stand alone release later? Obviously, the new albums is more priority in terms of sales.
Hawksmoor
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by Hawksmoor »

And No Coffee Table wrote:That's weird.

If it's real, then the official site has been listing the wrong bonus tracks on the vinyl edition for the last six weeks.

If it's not real, then where did that list of bonus tracks come from? It's an intriguing list, all co-writes with well-known songwriters ("Everyone's Playing House" with Burt Bacharach, "The Lovers That Never Were" with Paul McCartney, "If You Love Me" with Johnny Cash, and "Down on the Bottom" with Bob Dylan).
It would be a very weird list to make up, and indeed you'd have to be a serious Costello fan to have done so. I'm optimistic that this could be a follow-up EP of some kind.

The four tracks originally listed are the same ones listed on the 'deluxe' version on iTunes (when I say 'originally', I mean 'Isabelle in Tears' through to 'You Shouldn't Look at Me', not these four).
jardine
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by jardine »

under lime lyric video at 5:05 says "This Year's Model T Look Now"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKkQtH75R8
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by And No Coffee Table »

https://twitter.com/SebastianKrys/statu ... 5994824705
Sebastian Krys wrote:Last night at the legendary #electricladystudios with @ElvisCostello playing back his new album #looknow & answering questions for press and guests. @ConcordRecords #howdidigethere ? #ElvisCostelloandtheImposters

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bronxapostle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by bronxapostle »

Oh really...AND GUESTS too??? thanks for the invite ELVIS!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:


Update...

After seeing photos from last night, i am HONESTLY GRATEFUL. :oops: :oops: seems oddly unconfortable an evening. A library crowd sat around and listened to the entire lp in churchlike fashion with ELVIS sitting amongst the crowd? Yikes!!! Too weird for me indeedy. See you in November or anytime you are on the stage and i am in the audience.
johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

After seeing photos from last night, i am HONESTLY GRATEFUL. :oops: :oops: seems oddly unconfortable an evening. A library crowd sat around and listened to the entire lp in churchlike fashion with ELVIS sitting amongst the crowd? Yikes!!! Too weird for me indeedy
Amen to that .
bronxapostle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by bronxapostle »

johnfoyle wrote:
After seeing photos from last night, i am HONESTLY GRATEFUL. :oops: :oops: seems oddly unconfortable an evening. A library crowd sat around and listened to the entire lp in churchlike fashion with ELVIS sitting amongst the crowd? Yikes!!! Too weird for me indeedy
Amen to that .
Thanks for your agreement John. Not that i am the kind to worry on such, but i was surmising folks think i was bemoaning sour grapes to be home last night. Quite the inverse, i have been so very lucky getting various one off thingies and chances to meet and chat over the years, that last night looks a real borefest. OTHER THAN THE MUSIC, naturally. TILL THE NEXT SHOW... :P
Neil.
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by Neil. »

No idea what it was like for Elvis but I believe it's a bit of a tradition in album-releasing circles. Was reading the autobiog of Andrew Lloyd Webber and he described the agonies of doing the whole 'play the album in front of the critics in a theatre' shennanigans.
bronxapostle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by bronxapostle »

Neil. wrote:No idea what it was like for Elvis but I believe it's a bit of a tradition in album-releasing circles. Was reading the autobiog of Andrew Lloyd Webber and he described the agonies of doing the whole 'play the album in front of the critics in a theatre' shennanigans.
Really? Does sound like an agony filled night. Oh well, if it is done this way...cheers to all.
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/inter ... dead-hope/

Elvis Costello: 'People are saying that rock is dead – Let's hope so!'

Elvis lives! "I'm doing great," says Elvis Costello, ruddy-cheeked and bristling with energy, "and actually I always was."

In July this year, after cancelling his European tour only a few shows in, the 64-year-old singer-songwriter announced that he'd had surgery to remove "a small but very aggressive cancerous malignancy" only six weeks earlier.

"I don't need to go into the gory details but I just couldn't find that extra gear. I wasn't singing well," says Costello now. "So I thought I'd better actually take my doctor's advice and get some rest."

No sooner was the statement released than things began to spiral out of control. "It was being reported like I was at death's door," he says, with more than a hint of anger about the way the story was sensationalised by the press. "All this 'battling cancer' nonsense is really disrespectful. I've got friends who are fighting a real battle, and to bracket myself with them would be melodramatic."

Costello was in the Electric Lady studio in New York with his band the Imposters (drummer Pete Thomas, keyboard player Steve Nieve and bassist Davey Farragher) when he received the call from his doctor. "Of course, news like that makes you take a deep breath," he says. "You are venturing into the unknown. But I was too busy to really think about it. I sang every note of the new record after I got the diagnosis."

Recorded in just four weeks and due for release next month, that album ranks among Costello's finest work. His 31st LP, coming eight years after he announced there would be no more, Look Now features 12 original, lyrically dazzling songs with glorious melodies and inventive arrangements.

There's a snappy Tamla Motown pastiche about a scorned single mother (Unwanted Number), several tremulously affecting torch ballads (Dishonour the Stars, He's Given Me Things) and an opening track about a dissolute and disrespectable showbiz veteran that's so stuffed with ideas that it seems to be at least three songs condensed into one (Under Lime).

Two tracks (Photographs Can Lie and Don't Look Now) were written with Burt Bacharach following their 1998 collaboration Painted from Memory. "I thought if I could add my kind of tougher sound to Burt's complex harmonic approach maybe we'd have something."

Another inspiration was Dusty Springfield's 1969 classic Dusty in Memphis for its "funky rhythm section and sophisticated harmony." But the album Costello most consciously set out to evoke was his own sprawling 1982 masterpiece Imperial Bedroom, although Look Now was recorded in a third of the time on a far tighter budget. "We've got 40 years of experience now. We know what not to play, which is half the battle."

More than half the songs on Look Now are sung from a female perspective. "I thought of it like folk music, where people sing across gender all the time and nothing is signified by it except the predicament of the character."

The unifying theme might be sexual power imbalance, whether considering the plight of a wife in a declining marriage (Stripping Paper), a daughter reflecting on her father's infidelities (Photographs Can Lie) or a model rejecting unwanted advances (Don't Look Now).

"These are things I've observed happen to people, or maybe been part of," says Costello, "but I've taken myself out of the firing line in some respects. There's a little less selfishness, in that it's not just about things that happened to me."

It could almost be an album inspired by the #MeToo movement, except it is not always obvious in Costello's narratives exactly who has the upper hand. "Some of these songs were written 25 years ago, which goes to show it's a problem that's always been there," he says. "The apparent power imbalance of man and woman hasn't been invented by putting a label on it."

While he is not unsympathetic to #MeToo, he admits he's "never been a great representative of banners. I understand why people have them, I'm not critical of it, but it's just not the way I work."

Emotional and sexual politics have been at the core of Costello's music from his very first album, My Aim Is True, in 1977, a punk classic packed with such poisonously bitter anti-love songs as Alison, I'm Not Angry and No Dancing. In 2015, he published a 670-page auto­biography, Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink – "the tome" as he jokingly calls it. "You could knock yourself out if you were reading that book and fell asleep."

The saga of how Declan McManus, son of big band singer Ross McManus, rose to fame as Elvis Costello, it is fuelled by guilt, shame and self-reproach, picking over his father's unfaithfulness and his own two failed marriages (the first to Mary Burgoyne, the second to Pogues bassist, Cait O'Riordan). Since 2003, he has been married to the Canadian jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, and they have twin boys, Dexter and Frank, now 12 years old.

Costello speaks about Krall with glowing affection, praising her musical abilities and emotional intelligence ("she can find things within songs that probably the composer didn't even know were there"). They live in Vancouver, and both work from home, a place Krall once described to me as having "a piano in every corner of the room. Duelling pianos! Elvis will be working on something in one corner, and I'll be working on something in another."

Costello, ever the contrarian, doesn't entirely endorse this picture of domestic harmony. "I am not much of a piano player," he says. "I am super loud, because I don't have any nuance, and I'll be hammering out the same key changes over and over, making all sorts of funny sounds.

"It must be maddening. Some people like silence to work but I can write outside with a storm going on all around me. I can write in the middle of utter chaos. She'll say, 'Have you finished that song yet?' It must drive her crazy."

Although they did some writing together for Krall's 2004 album The Girl in the Other Room, the couple have never embraced a full collaboration. "We collaborate in a roundabout way," says Costello. "You get a different appreciation of music when listening with somebody you love. With her, I hear things in music I wasn't aware of before, and I'm sure she would tell you the same thing."

In the years since his last album, 2010's National Ransom, – which he described at the time as "the end of the line" – Costello has made a collaborative album with hip-hop band the Roots (Wise Up Ghost, 2013), contributed to a project of discarded Bob Dylan lyrics (Lost on the River, 2014) and continued to tour relentlessly "to create shows for the repertoire to exist". But he reveals that he has also written two musicals that never reached the stage, while a third is being workshopped right now. Based on Elia Kazan's 1957 film A Face in the Crowd, it's the story of an unscrupulous, venal, small-town radio jock who becomes an influential figure in American politics.

"You can see how it might have some contemporary relevance," Costello notes. He has composed 20 songs for it. "The main thing is: do the songs matter to you when you're singing them and to somebody else when they hear them? Where they appear is not the issue, whether it's on an album or in a theatre."

It sounds as though he's come a very long way from his punk rock beginnings, I suggest. "Thank God!" says Costello. "You know I never liked rock. I hate to say this, but to me rock is a big square thing that fills stadiums with a really square beat and it has never interested me.

"Still to this day I have never heard lots of classic rock records. I've never heard Pink Floyd and never heard Led Zeppelin. People keep saying rock is dead. Well, let's ­f------ hope so."

Rock is dead, but Elvis lives. It's good to have him back.

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Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

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Review by Stephen Deusner.

Album review in Uncut. 8 out of 10

THERE are a lot of old friends haunting the verses and choruses of "Under Lime", the opening track from Elvis Costello's first LP in five years and his first with the Imposters in a decade. That's Steve Nieve adding buoyant piano pomp and Pete Thomas laying down a springy hi-hat rhythm that keeps the song moving along at a businesslike clip. Joining those two Attractions/Imposters is Davey Faragher, interspersing melodic bass notes throughout the song like raised eyebrows.And finally there's the song's protagonist, Jimmie, a song-and-dance man trying to make a comeback on a televised variety show. Costello introduced him to us nearly a decade ago on "Jimmie Standing In The Rain", off 2010's National Ransom, where he was a figure of romantic and professional tragedy, left in a deluge at the railroad platform to suffer the indignities of weather and obscurity. In "Under Lime" his fortunes have barely changed, but he remains a welcome presence and, to some extent, an avatar for Costello himself as an artist gleefully out of step with the vagaries of the current pop world.

With its burbling fountains of dancehall horns that sound like a laugh track, "Under Lime" sets the tone for a record that sounds immediately familiar while adding some intriguing sleights of hand. Half the joy of a new Elvis Costello record is wondering exactly what kind of Elvis Costello record it will be. After establishing himself as punk's extremely literate id in the late 1970s, he has followed various promiscuous muses to various styles and traditions, as though the punkest thing in the world was rejecting punk for country & western, Brill Building pop, late-night jazz, gritty R&B, even classical composition.

Gradually he has built a voluminous and wildly unpredictable catalogue that seemed to end with his 2013 collaboration with the Roots, Wise Up Ghost. Occasionally that catalogue sounded frustratingly compartmentalised, as though I Costello had worked to cordon off these divergent genre experiments into separate albums. But the excellent Look Now is more about throwing everything against the wall: he surveys his personal musical history, takes ideas from here and there, and lets them bounce off each other in surprising ways. "Mr & Mrs Hush" has the bile and urgency of his punk material, while "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter", co-written with Carole King, pulses with a gritty R&B rhythm. "Suspect My Tears" could have been a hit for Dusty or Cilla back in the '60s, and Burt Bacharach even pops up on "Photographs Can Lie", reinforcing the song's melancholy with a pristine piano overture. Look Now changes shape constantly, each song showing the range of its creator and his collaborators as they indulge so many musical whims. Costello's voice has gained a bit more texture with age, but he rambles through 'Burnt Sugar..." and "Stripping Paper" with customary swagger. He's always had a wry humour, and occasionally he winks at the audience, but he's most disarming when he sounds utterly sincere.


On "He's Given Me Things", he skates up into a tender falsetto, which conveys his sympathy toward the song's female narrator as well as the realisation of her own power. It’s a lovely moment and a gentle climax to the album. She is one of several female characters on Look Now, and she may or may not show up in other songs, in particular "Don't Look Now". He portrays most of his characters with compassion rather than contempt, which has the unexpected effect of making Look Now sound moored to the present moment, with songs depicting sexual warfare in a way that evokes the #MeToo movement. Likewise, "I Let The Sun Go Down" uses that old saying about the sun never setting on the British Empire to figure out why it's in the dark. What could have been a Brexit complaint instead becomes something much more poignant and rueful, reminiscent of "American Without Tears" and Costello's other examinations of British identity.

Look Now is a richly tragicomic menagerie of characters, the most compelling of which is Costello himself. Here's an artist who has never been a conventionally confessional singer-songwriter baring the darkest corners of his soul, yet he reveals so much of himself on this album. Like Jimmie struggling to adjust to the new medium of television in "Under Lime", Costello understands that he's an artist slightly out of step with the present moment, torn between the past and the present. That conflict makes this an album of tremendous humour and empathy, less a comeback than a considered continuation of an unprecedented career.
stricttime81
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by stricttime81 »

I can't stop listening to the first 3 songs, they're so good. I haven't looked forward to an album this much in years.
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Neil.
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by Neil. »

Thanks for posting this review. I am now officially gagging to hear the new album!!!
sweetest punch
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by sweetest punch »

The november issue of MOJO has an interview with Elvis: https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/music-ma ... ors-issue/
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

Q Magazine review of Look Now


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johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

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NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 17: Steve Macklam, Elvis Costello, Joe McEwen, and Darrell Gilmour attend the listening party for Elvis Costello's new album "Look Now" at Electric Lady Studios on September 17, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman / WireImage,)


https://www.indierocks.mx/musica/cobert ... y-studios/


Google translation -


"I'm stronger than ever," Elvis Costello.

Last Monday, September 17, we had the opportunity to attend a listening session of the new album by English musician Elvis Costello . The session took place at the Electric Lady studios in New York City and consisted of an intimate meeting in which press members, record companies and friends of the musician listened to the new production Look Now - with a release date in October of this year. year- in its entirety. The listening session was followed by a conference in which Elvis Costello and one of the directors of the Concord label (which will be in charge of distributing the album) talked about the production and answered questions from the audience.

The main room of Electric Lady Studios - a studio founded by Jimi Hendrix in 1970 - became a room in which the audience could listen to the entire album on the audio system of the place. The first song, "Under Lime" , is a narrative theme that tells the story of a man who is about to suffer a public humiliation. Like many other songs on the album, "Under Lime" uses the contrast between an austere production with few instruments and sections with complex arrangements for breath instruments (bass clarinet, French horn, alto saxophone and flute). About this, Costello He said he wanted the sound to have "a round shape", an effect he achieved by using this particular instrumentation.

In general, the disc plays with density contrasts; many times there are sections in which only the piano and the voice are heard, other times these elements grow and give way to the entrance of the whole band or the ensemble of breaths. The order of the songs on the disc accentuates this intention; Each theme with complex arrangements is followed by a ballad with a more minimalist production. Thus, after the intense ending of "Under Lime" , the second track enters , a ballad titled "Do not Look Now" , which starts only with piano and voice. For this and another one of the "ballades on the disc, called " Photographs Can Lie " , Costello had the collaboration of the legendary pianist and composer Burt Bacharach . During the conference, Costello spoke of the importance that Bacharach had in this album and the fundamental role played by the piano throughout the production. On this, he related that all the songs were composed on the piano, even saying that every time he thinks of this album he thinks of it as a "piano disc", even though most of the songs have arrangements for different instruments.

Known for his narrative songs, the English musician spoke of the stories he imagined for the themes of this album. He mentioned that the fourth song of the album, "Stripping Paper" , is about a woman who discovers an infidelity and talked about how she used the metaphor of removing layers of paper to represent the way in which discovering a lie opens the door to discover other . He also referred to the tenth song on the album, "Suspect My Tears", which deals with two people who pretend their emotions. About this song in particular, he said that he wrote it several years ago, but he had never felt that it fit with any of his other albums. He also said that this was the case with many of the songs in this work; Many of them were written more than a decade ago, but it was until this moment that he felt they belonged to a record.

During the session, someone asked if he ever thinks about who he was before and if he looks back to reflect on everything he has done during his career, to which Elvis Costello - between laughs - answered "Why would I do that ?! " . He said that, despite having a career as extensive as he has, he tries never to look back and concentrate on what is coming, on all the projects he has and everything he wants to do in the future.

Someone else asked about his health condition. During the summer, Elvis Costello was forced to cancel dates of his European tour due to a surgery he had to undergo to treat the cancer that was recently diagnosed. To this, the English musician replied: "Thank you very much for asking, I feel good. I have many projects on the doorstep and I am stronger than ever. "
johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

Image
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER 17: Steve Macklam, Elvis Costello, Joe McEwen, and Darrell Gilmour attend the listening party for Elvis Costello's new album "Look Now" at Electric Lady Studios on September 17, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman / WireImage,)


https://www.indierocks.mx/musica/cobert ... y-studios/


Google translation -


"I'm stronger than ever," Elvis Costello.

Last Monday, September 17, we had the opportunity to attend a listening session of the new album by English musician Elvis Costello . The session took place at the Electric Lady studios in New York City and consisted of an intimate meeting in which press members, record companies and friends of the musician listened to the new production Look Now - with a release date in October of this year. year- in its entirety. The listening session was followed by a conference in which Elvis Costello and one of the directors of the Concord label (which will be in charge of distributing the album) talked about the production and answered questions from the audience.

The main room of Electric Lady Studios - a studio founded by Jimi Hendrix in 1970 - became a room in which the audience could listen to the entire album on the audio system of the place. The first song, "Under Lime" , is a narrative theme that tells the story of a man who is about to suffer a public humiliation. Like many other songs on the album, "Under Lime" uses the contrast between an austere production with few instruments and sections with complex arrangements for breath instruments (bass clarinet, French horn, alto saxophone and flute). About this, Costello He said he wanted the sound to have "a round shape", an effect he achieved by using this particular instrumentation.

In general, the disc plays with density contrasts; many times there are sections in which only the piano and the voice are heard, other times these elements grow and give way to the entrance of the whole band or the ensemble of breaths. The order of the songs on the disc accentuates this intention; Each theme with complex arrangements is followed by a ballad with a more minimalist production. Thus, after the intense ending of "Under Lime" , the second track enters , a ballad titled "Do not Look Now" , which starts only with piano and voice. For this and another one of the "ballades on the disc, called " Photographs Can Lie " , Costello had the collaboration of the legendary pianist and composer Burt Bacharach . During the conference, Costello spoke of the importance that Bacharach had in this album and the fundamental role played by the piano throughout the production. On this, he related that all the songs were composed on the piano, even saying that every time he thinks of this album he thinks of it as a "piano disc", even though most of the songs have arrangements for different instruments.

Known for his narrative songs, the English musician spoke of the stories he imagined for the themes of this album. He mentioned that the fourth song of the album, "Stripping Paper" , is about a woman who discovers an infidelity and talked about how she used the metaphor of removing layers of paper to represent the way in which discovering a lie opens the door to discover other . He also referred to the tenth song on the album, "Suspect My Tears", which deals with two people who pretend their emotions. About this song in particular, he said that he wrote it several years ago, but he had never felt that it fit with any of his other albums. He also said that this was the case with many of the songs in this work; Many of them were written more than a decade ago, but it was until this moment that he felt they belonged to a record.

During the session, someone asked if he ever thinks about who he was before and if he looks back to reflect on everything he has done during his career, to which Elvis Costello - between laughs - answered "Why would I do that ?! " . He said that, despite having a career as extensive as he has, he tries never to look back and concentrate on what is coming, on all the projects he has and everything he wants to do in the future.

Someone else asked about his health condition. During the summer, Elvis Costello was forced to cancel dates of his European tour due to a surgery he had to undergo to treat the cancer that was recently diagnosed. To this, the English musician replied: "Thank you very much for asking, I feel good. I have many projects on the doorstep and I am stronger than ever. "
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

A profile/interview in an Italian newspaper -


http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... r_22,_2018


The usual - a few interesting snippets ( Google translation)

The song "Burnt sugar is so bitter" has something of the last Bowie but is also linked to the period of Ziggy Stardust for the attack that recalls "Life on Mars?": Is a wanted resemblance?

"Do they really look alike? I did not notice that. The hò written with Carol King, should be asked to her, I in addition to the text I wrote only the music of the refrain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As for aggression, I'm not aggressive at all. Perhaps this can be explained: if you look at his photos, at the beginning of Beaties Lennon when he was in public he never wore glasses, and so behind the scenes to watch people tended to move away and arch his back for see better: this is what makes you look aggressive. It could have happened to me too
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by And No Coffee Table »

And No Coffee Table wrote:EC tweeted that a music video is "coming soon."
It's still "coming soon," but EC has tweeted this teaser.

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bronxapostle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by bronxapostle »

Oh...when i quickly glanced this yesterday, i guess the squareness of it had me think it a 45 picture sleeve. Well, i can hope so still, right? :D
johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

Entertainment Weekly , via Jeff on Facebook


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johnfoyle
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

Mojo , November 2018

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Superb profile in the new Mojo - great use of Richard McCaffrey's photo from the 1970s. The text will be on the wiki in a few weeks , just giving the magazine a chance to get some sales!
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Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by sweetest punch »

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... -interview

Elvis Costello on His Cancer Scare, Reteaming With Burt Bacharach & Immigration

Five years after joining with hip-hop collective The Roots for his last release, the 2013 left-field delight Wise Up Ghost, Elvis Costello reteamed with go-to band The Imposters for Look Now, out Oct. 12. But then a new label deal for the LP fell through (he won’t say with whom; he released it on Concord), and a cancer scare forced him to cancel six tour dates in July while he recovered. “I went back on the road a bit too early -- I didn’t leave enough time to get my energy back,” he says.

Look Now, however, hardly lacks in vitality. With his deft pen providing sharp studies of romance and murky motives, the album sees Costello tapping top-shelf studios such as L.A.'s EastWest and NYC's Electric Lady for this collection of lush, sophisticated pop. If all of this seems like Burt Bacharach or Carole King territory, you're on the right track – both of the 20th century songwriting giants have co-writes on the LP.

Costello, 64, is now in remission, and he’s bursting with wit and energy when he sits down at Manhattan's Redbury Hotel (in a pinstripe suit, no less) to discuss the album, his health, misgivings about calling Donald Trump a clown and the “sewage companies” behind record labels.

Your cancer surgery was successful, but you’ve said the story surrounding your health got out of your control.

The English tabloids chose to make it sound as if I was in some sort of mortal struggle. It was my choice to initially be private about this, because I didn’t want to have to worry my 91-year-old mother or my 11-year-old twin boys. It has taken until I just [recently] visited England to get it straight. This, thankfully, was a relatively joyful thing to be able to say: “I’m fine.” And all of the people writing to me that have never met me [is] fantastic. I couldn’t be happier to know that people care.

The first deal you had for this album fell apart right before you were about to start recording. What happened?

People at the company level were completely committed to the record, but I think the people above [them made] a different calculation. They answer to people who have train services and own sewage companies -- they’re in the commodities business; they could care less about what’s on the records. I’m not saying this in a self-pitying way, because, heaven knows, I have young musician friends with loads of talent, but there just isn’t the mechanism to support them.

The first song on Look Now, "Under Lime," features the same character we met in "Jimmie Standing In the Rain" from 2010's National Ransom. Did you decide you wanted to return to that character, or did you start writing the song and realize, "Oh this could be a sort of sequel" after the fact?

I had the idea of writing two or more sequels of particular character songs, and then as it turned out, quite a lot of the songs that we ended up considering for this record were written from other people's points of view. I thought the preface to the record might be this little shabby tale because [in the other songs] on this record, the people are a lot more resilient and admirable. The woman in "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter," which I wrote with Carole King [in the late '90s], she's trying to believe in something. It's an account of how she's juggling everything -- the judgment of her neighbors, her ex-husband, her kids, and she's trying to find a way in life where she might trust in somebody again and fall in love.

A lot of the songs seem to be about everyday tragedies.

They're not unprecedented. I didn't want them to be. I just wanted them to ring true. [The song] "Stripping Paper" is an unusual way to tell the story of the dissolution of a marriage. This woman distractedly pulls the wallpaper from the walls and sees her life through the memory of having drawn a line on the wall where their daughter was measured, and maybe even earlier than that, having an erotic memory of her and her husband when they were happier. It's something you don't have to actually experience to have some feeling for it, and that's all I wanted. I wanted the songs to have a feeling, a tenderness and expressiveness, and I couldn't ask for more from the band and really all the players that play on this.

On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, you advised during your New York show, “If you’re going to vote for a fucking orange clown, you could pick Ronald McDonald.”

It was an easy gag. It wasn’t the most profound joke I’ve ever made.

Meanwhile, album track “I Let the Sun Go Down” is a sympathetic look at a British citizen crying over the death of the empire.

I’m sympathetic to people I don’t agree with, because I try to understand why they feel so passionately. I don’t salute. I don’t have to, and I won’t. The point of the song is that I respect somebody that will -- but don’t tell other people who have a justifiable reason for not doing it that they don’t have a right.

You’re so prolific and have so many one-off songs. Looking through your discography, I had forgotten about the absolute gem you did, “Long Journey Home (Anthem),” with the Chieftains' Paddy Moloney for a 1998 miniseries about the Irish in America.

That’s a beautiful piece. I’m very proud of that piece. It's kind of like, as it were, the Irish in America's anthem. We did it one time at Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day with a big choir. It was really stirring. But that’s also a true song, you know? The melody is really a beautiful, ancient melody that Paddy adapted. [Quoting the lyric] "But as you ascend the ladder, look out below where you tread" is the immigrant experience generation to generation. Unfortunately, historically, you learn that people that came into the country very much in search of a new way of living, and a way of surviving in the case of the Irish, then became the people who stood upon the hands of the next one up the ladder. Or, the people who were already there. It’s part of human nature, part of history. There’s benevolent people in every culture, and there are villains in every culture. It’s not as simplistic as that. But it was a true song.

HIS GUESTHOUSE

Over the course of his 40-year career, Costello has collaborated with countless legends. Here, he reflects on everyone from The Roots to Sir Paul McCartney.

CAROLE KING

"When I was living in Dublin [in the '90s] she came over and we wrote it in one afternoon," Costello recalls of "Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter," which finally sees the light on Look Now. "I couldn't believe that so much time had gone by. Once we recorded it, I sent it to her -- thankfully, she liked it. Of course I'm very glad that we passed the test with Carole."

BURT BACHARACH

Costello and Bacharach, who won a Grammy for their 1998 collaboration Painted From Memory, worked together on three songs on Look Now. “He doesn’t need to collaborate on music,” says Costello. “It speaks of his generosity and curiosity to see what happens.”

THE ROOTS

Costello says that working with Questlove as a co-producer on Wise Up Ghost was not unlike the process of making Look Now. “Strange enough, there’s a more common approach to the recording process for these two records than the music would suggest.”

PAUL MCCARTNEY

After contributing four co-writes to McCartney's 1989 LP Flowers In the Dirt, Costello says it was "thrilling" to see their unreleased material on that album's 2017 re-release. "A lot of the best work we did was in those demos. That box [set] included bits of a notebook and a letter I had written to him -- I couldn't believe the things that he had retained from that time because he moves at a lick. He doesn’t hang around, he’s on to the next thing."

DIANA KRALL

"I played the ukulele on [2012's Glad Rag Doll] and edited some lyrics for her on [2004's] The Girl In the Other Room, but our collaboration is in life and our family," Costello says, being sure to add, "She has a beautiful record out [Love Is Here to Stay] with Tony Bennett right now."

ALLEN TOUSSAINT

After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, Costello and his backing band joined the R&B icon for 2006's The River In Reverse. "He had not a hint of self-pity about losing his house and his studio. He just got to work. One of the best things we've ever done as a band was to go to New Orleans with him and finish that record."
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
Neil.
Posts: 1576
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2005 6:14 am
Location: London

Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by Neil. »

BBC radio doesn't seem to be playing the new stuff. Here's their automatically-updated list of EC & The Imps spins:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/a3e ... 10c#tracks

They continue to play Elvis oldies every week, however:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/8a3 ... 0ba#tracks
johnfoyle
Posts: 14852
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2003 4:37 pm
Location: Dublin , Ireland

Re: Look Now: new album announced!

Post by johnfoyle »

Classic Pop October 2018

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