New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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Jack of All Parades
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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“Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
But who is that on the other side of you?”

TS Eliot “The Waste Land”

This album is haunted by ghosts, figuratively and literally. This is a record which catches a vibrant sense of the uncanny- it has a feel of helplessness as so often experienced in one’s dreams. Our lives are many days, day after day; we trace through ourselves continuously only to meet ourselves. John Keats has a poem- “The Living Hand” which this record sadly recalls for me consistently as I have played it:

“This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thy own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscious-calmed- see here it is-
I hold it toward you.....”

The dead ‘hand’ of the past reaches through these songs to a listener’s ear and side. Another element is grief and time’s passage:

“O! grief hath chang’d me since you saw me last,
And careful hours with time’s deformed hand
Hath written strange defeatures in my face:
But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?”

Shakespeare “The Comedy of Errors”

When we last left EC he had filled an album’s worth of beautifully detailed historical vignettes. The years since have been filled with what Walter Benjamin would call a personal history that is not homogenous empty time but time filled by the presence of the ‘now’. This record captures for me a time where presidents and prime ministers are making underground deals and where ‘laws’ and promises are broken with abandon. We would love to be walked uptown to prosperity and fortune but the red or blue may only result in the abdication of white. These songs are a panorama of a dream to me, scares and shocks, an attempt to get to the other side of these strange days. They are filled with a deliberate, stuttering beat that is insistent- does one take a position- or just throw up one’s hands. Is the struggle of our lives even worth it?

These songs are nervous and tense; they are filled with betrayals, failures, disintegration, disenchantment and lies. Our moral guideposts have lost their meanings. The songs wander- they disappear and reappear in ‘ghostly’ juxtapositions. We are experiencing a deadening of senses- day blends into day- either one’s senses deaden or they are sharpened- so that the smallest of changes give meaning to one’s existence. Throughout the album EC makes a conscious effort to use his words as old Ezra advocated using his words to throw a visual image on to the reader’s [and listener’s] imagination or to change it by sound. It is a social criticism that advocates waking up and exploring oneself. There is a stress on spontaneity. The music is filled with a clear synthesis of rhythm and phrasing- it is a straight forward language that commands in the way that everyday language is spoken. The lyrics are filled with Pound’s ‘absolute concentration' in language.

I thank Ahmir Thompson and his band mates for taking in EC into their inner circle. They seemingly have been responsible for bringing the magic back into his music- his vibrant voice and his past penchant to back it up with its duplicate. It is mournful, boastful, brittle, reflective- alive in the ear. It is playfully loud and clear and then it will seemingly vanish. These songs celebrate previous lives, a multiplicity of lives and the simultaneous notion of time. EC paints the historical canvas of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. He catches the spiritual aridity that fills our world- there is a pungent sense of loss in beliefs that is culminated in the end song “If I Could Believe” so poignantly. I have to catch myself each time I hear the ending chords of that song vanish into thin air as if evaporating as a dream ends. In fact so many of these songs are airy treats- they flicker in and out of my consciousness. Aurally he puts the exotic in my ears- pungent sounds- buried life- trying to make sense of history, society, and faith. As Ezra was fond of saying this album is ‘news that stays news’. It is the product of a mature man and his friends and it returns me to some past ‘ghosts’ of albums in an intelligent and mercurial manner. Where in the past a cynical young man would have snapped caustic comments when tackling this albums themes- here we have the measured, nuanced and mature musings of an adult.

I have not had such fun with the physical aspect of a record in some time. It evokes an icon and it beautifully plays with the associations of that icon. I disagree with others on this site- this is one time when the ‘deluxe’ package is merited.. I can only hope that this is not a one off. I think we are offered a taste of what future collaborations might produce in the three bonus songs.- particularly “The Puppet Has Cut His Strings” which just might be the most intelligent and heartfelt dissection of a personal religious crisis I have heard in contemporary pop. This record is a marvelous gift- it has more than exceeded my expectations.

I have been reading the poetry of George Herbert lately- there is a sonnet by him that resonates with the beating heart of this album. It goes like this:

“Sinne”

“Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,

Pulpit and sundayes, sorrow dogging sinne,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and strategems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,

Blessings beforehand, tyes of gratefulnesse,
The sound of glorie ringing in our eares;
Without our shame; within, our consciousness;
Angels and grace, eternall hopes and fears.

Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosome- sinne blows quite away.”

EC and Herbert know we are at heart sinful beings who will always be caught out by our own baseness. I am so grateful for this record and in awe of its wickedly, playful messages.
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

Beautiful post, Jack!

It's interesting how the mind (and heart) work. I might think differently if I'd held off for the deluxe edition and its booklet, but I've never tended to frame music in terms of analogies with poetry (and heck, this may be a reason why I feel no big need to get the booklet to begin with). I can certainly see where a great songwriter is achieving effects comparable to poetry - that's the truth within the lie that Bob Dylan is a "poet," for instance, and is the key to understanding how it is that after 1960 songwriters supplanted the social function of the poet in mainstream educated culture - but for whatever reason it doesn't come intuitiviely to me to elide the two forms, and I tend to take word and sound together as a nearly-inseparable warp and weft. By contrast, you have a real gift for bringing song and poetry together and interpreting one in light of the other. Nicely done.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Jack of All Parades »

Simply, thank you. I do not think it is a coincidence that my three favorite albums of 2013 to this point are haunted by 'ghosts' or phantasms- Jason's record equally has haunted me since its release in June:

http://youtu.be/DvZoQhHi65Q

And Rodney and Emmylou's:

http://youtu.be/OTOgDlm0KVo
"....there's a merry song that starts in 'I' and ends in 'You', as many famous pop songs do....'
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Azmuda »

The Roots played the "Life Is Good Festival" in Canton, Massachusetts yesterday. A torrent of the webcast is on Dime.

Setlist:
Table of Contents, Part 1
The Next Movement
You Got Me (incl. Kirk solo)
Thought at Work
How I Got Over
Here I Come
The Seed
Move On Up
Men at Work

band:
Black Thought: vocals
Questlove: drums, vocals
Kamal: keyboard, vocals
Knuckles: percussion
Kirk Douglas: guitar, vocals
Damon "Tuba Gooding, Jr." Bryson: sousaphone
Ray Angry: keyboard
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John
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by John »

The album entered the UK chart at number 28 today which is Elvis' highest chart position since the number 17 position When I Was Cruel reached in 2002. It was at 21 in the midweek chart and I guess it will disappear next week.

Called in to HMV Uxbridge today - no sign of it anywhere.
sweetest punch
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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Interview with Questlove and Elvis on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224505408 ... g-together#
Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.buffalonews.com/gusto/disc-r ... o-20130921

Pop

Elvis Costello & the Roots, “Wise Up Ghost” (Blue Note). It’s been clear from the beginning that “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” was going to seriously shake up our preconceptions regarding how music might work on late-night TV. Simply employing the Roots as the show’s house band should have made everyone sit up and take notice. Add to that the consistent high quality level of musical guests, the unusual pairings of artists, the “theme weeks”, and the fact that the Roots can apparently play any style of music better than just about anyone else – well, the game has been raised, and significantly. Now we’ve been gifted with the first tangible product of the show’s brave attitude toward musical programming. Elvis Costello and the Roots met and bonded while Costello was a guest on the Fallon show, deepened their mutual appreciation society during subsequent appearances, and ultimately, hatched a plan to make a record together. It might seem like a strange pairing at first, but think about it – Costello, Irish by birth, English by upbringing, has always been funky in his own way. (Think “Radio Radio,” “Every Day I Write the Book,” most of “Punch the Clock,” large portions of “Spike.”) The Roots are one of the funkiest American bands extant, but the band has such a deep love for so many different styles of music, and such abundant facility within so many of them, that the fact that Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is a hardcore Costello fan becomes less surprising. “Wise Up Ghost” sounds like exactly what it is – a labor of love undertaken in a relaxed manner by artists who love and respect each other. Lyrically, “Wise Up Ghost” offers snapshots of a world consumed by chaos, as if Costello aimed to keep a scrapbook of the end times to share with his grandkids on some lazy Sunday afternoon in a future that isn’t likely to ever come. It’s heavy subject matter, but the images are so vivid and delivered in such a playful manner that the album never feels weighed down by self-importance. This is that rarest of rare occurrences - a meeting of musical superstars that comes off as organic, inspired and necessary. ΩΩΩΩ (Jeff Miers)
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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http://www.mxdwn.com/2013/09/18/reviews ... -up-ghost/

Elvis Costello and The Roots – Wise Up Ghost

This Year’s Model

On Wise Up Ghost, two musical icons team up and birth a musical prodigy that’s a fine infusion of both parents’ DNA. Equal parts British troubadour and Philadelphian jam band, Wise Up Ghost is a perfect culmination of two long careers intersecting and showing each other what they learned along the way. Elvis Costello brings his usually insightful lyricism and versatile vocals to the table, while The Roots use this as an excuse to show their full range of musical talents, shuffling through genres like a blackjack dealer.

The first eight seconds of “Walk Us Uptown” starts off with weird beeps and bloops, sounding like an aged R2D2 on the verge of death, but this false sense of direction eventually leads to a funky little number which displays the full spectrum of talent that is culled together here. The drums are amazing, the bass line is fantastic, and the vocals are unquestionably Mr. Costello’s.

“Sugar Won’t Work” slows down the tempo as Costello laments, “and this will predict the times these signs will bring / Me and my stupid heart / We were never apart / But now sugar won’t work.” But The Roots pick the bear back up on “Refuse to Be Saved,” while Costello’s performance evokes images of a young Bob Dylan in the ’60s crooning about politics and persecution.

“Just because you don’t speak the language / Doesn’t mean that you can’t understand,” is just one of the many lyrical gems tucked away on “Tripwire.” The Roots play gently, creating an almost lullaby backdrop, while Costello’s voice sounds as smooth as it ever has. Ending out the record is “If I Could Believe,” in which Costello delivers a powerful chorus, confessing “If I could believe / You were from heaven sent / Then just losing you / Would be my punishment.”

Sometimes, when you add two variables together that are exceptional on their own, they can become volatile, but that is not the case on Wise Up Ghost. The Roots and Elvis Costello not only complemented each other wonderfully but they also used their differences to create something truly amazing.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/09/18 ... -his-past/

Ghost out of its shell: Elvis Costello teams up with The Roots to put a fresh spin on his past

Having spent his whole career skirting pigeonholes, Elvis Costello has no love for them now. The songwriting chameleon’s new album, Wise Up Ghost (Blue Note), recorded in collaboration with The Roots, is “just some music,” he says. “Anybody who thinks, ‘Oh yeah, this is the hip-hop record’ – that would be such a terrible thing.”

In fairness, Costello isn’t averse to exercises in genre: his 36-year discography includes soul, country, piano-ballad, orchestral pop, chamber music, and New Orleans records, in addition to every flavour of rock. And while he may not rap on Wise Up Ghost, the oft-dramatic singer narrows his range, declaiming his lyrics against Roots drummer/bandleader Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson’s rough-textured breakbeat grooves. What’s more, in the spirit of hip-hop sampling and collage, Costello has found a new way to revisit – and remix – his past.

My agenda was to wake up to what I had at my disposal

He first met The Roots in 2009 on The Jimmy Fallon Show, where they serve as the musically omnivorous house band, equally adept at freestyling songs about audience members and slow-jamming the news. At first, Costello was anxious enough about whether The Roots would back him to call up a friend of theirs who works with his wife, Diana Krall, and make sure it was worth even asking. ?uestlove, it turned out, was such a keen fan, he even worked up a version of Costello’s classic High Fidelity based on an obscure early, funked-up live recording. Over the next few years, Costello would reappear on the show and jam with The Roots in their dressing room in between stops on an ambitious world tour.

Costello and his backing band, The Impostors, had learned 150 of his songs; their setlists were determined by audience members who’d spin a giant wheel, revealing patterns he hadn’t noticed before. “My agenda,” he says, on the phone from New York, “was to wake up to what I had at my disposal,” including “narrative threads between the songs.” He started writing material by patching together lyrics from throughout his career, which he’d set to new melodies, reconfiguring vignettes of Thatcherite greed and post-Katrina malaise. His aim was to create “a bridge to a number of new thoughts. I wanted to show where those thoughts emerged from – that it was a consistent line of inquiry, that our vigilance about all these matters is the only way in which they get attended to.” He also started writing densely imagistic new songs such as “Tripwire,” which packs religion, oppression, surveillance, media, and propaganda into a scant few lines: “There’s a cross in the line of the circuit / There’s a voice that you might overhear / There’s a lens making the picture perfect / They say you have nothing to fear.”

He and The Roots started recording their dressing-room sessions; often they’d base the music on Costello’s back catalogue as well. “Tripwire” builds melancholic soul on elements of the pristine 1989 number Satellite. The disquieting, cinematic title track uses a string sample from North and Cinqo Minutos Con Voy grew out of rehearsals for High Fidelity, as captured by Roots producer Steve Mandel, who adds swirling, dubby effects.

This last song’s lyrics were inspired by Costello’s 1982 song Shipbuilding, the story of an English father working on a boat that will sail his son to Argentina to be killed in the Falklands War. Costello calls Cinqo Minutos “a simple tragedy about a daughter waiting for her father to arrive into exile and never arriving because he’s been pushed out of an aeroplane.” He compares the Argentinian dictators’ methods of suppressing dissent with “accounts of people who have been flown off somewhere to be interrogated in our name, without any accountability, sometimes by people whose methods we abhor and claim to be those of the reprehensible enemy.”

Wise Up Ghost is shot through with anger at a dysfunctional world, and yet Costello insists it’s not without hope: otherwise, he notes wryly, he’d have called it Drop Dead Ghost. The album is full of ear candy and danceable beats, and its apocalyptic imagery is relieved at the end as Costello, in old-fashioned crooner mode, sings the gentle If I Could Believe. It’s a moment of near-spiritual earnestness that closes with a big string section playing what Costello calls “crazy chromatics … undercutting any kind of grandiosity.”

For all his thoughtful observations, and his and ?uestlove’s encyclopedic pop geekery, Costello says they “haven’t really theorized this record … we just played.” True to his former role as the host of CTV’s songwriter interview show Spectacle, he seems to prefer asking questions to offering answers. And where the cover of Wise Up Ghost seems to mythologize him, echoing the design of the City Lights beat-era Pocket Poets Series that published Ginsberg’s Howl, Costello admits he demurred when it was first suggested.

He may have penned some of the most vivid lyrics in pop – ?uestlove compares them to the work of Ezra Pound – but he insists, “I don’t have any pretense to being a poet. There are some very cruel and vain and deluded people among poets… they’re not all as a class a noble breed. Doctors get struck off for malpractice, and bankers go to jail and get disgraced – all those voices of authority have switched around a little bit. So I’ll just be me, thank you for the compliment, but I’m not going to elevate myself.”

So the words “Number One” on the cover – they’re simply there to foreshadow a sequel? Costello chuckles. “That’s just a chart prediction. We’re not setting the bar too high.”
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sweetest punch
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://exclaim.ca/News/elvis_costello_e ... e_up_ghost

Elvis Costello Explains the Origins of His Roots Collab 'Wise Up Ghost'

During his 35-year career, Elvis Costello has been an incredibly prolific collaborator, so it seems natural that he would eventually hook up with the Roots, the band now on every musician's speed dial given their enviable presence on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Their collaborative Wise Up Ghost, out now on Blue Note Records/Universal, however, wasn't a spontaneous or sudden affair. As Costello tells Exclaim!, the partnership developed gradually over the past couple of years to the point where both parties agreed the next step was to make an album.

"When I first went on [Fallon], I didn't know what the protocol was about the Roots accompanying people," Costello says. "I'd seen them do it on a number of nights, but I didn't know how tight they were with those artists. They could have been friends from another occasion; I didn't think it was necessarily something you could request."

During a subsequent appearance on the show, an idea was hatched to rearrange one of Costello's old songs. The track chosen was 1983's Grandmaster Flash-inspired "Pills and Soap," which led Costello to re-imagine the song under the title "Stick Out Your Tongue." It was a writing technique he employed elsewhere on the Wise Up Ghost, on which the Roots' taut grooves at times recall Costello's early work with the Attractions, which in turn has rekindled a lot of his old lyrical venom.

The end result is modern beats and samples driving Costello's soulful and sometimes ragged vocals. Costello says he was conscious of people believing he was venturing into hip-hop by working with the Roots and is pleased that the results have proved those assumptions false.

"It would just be idiotic to assume that I would even think about trying to do a rap record," he says. "But there are plenty of songs I've done where the declamation of the lyric has been more important than the melodiousness of my voice. Right from the beginning, 'Pump It Up' is from a noble lineage of one-note songs, where the rhythm is driving it as opposed to melodies that, as they used to say, the milkman can whistle."

As for touring plans, while Costello and the Roots launched Wise Up Ghost together with a show in Brooklyn earlier this week, Costello's next appearances will be completely solo affairs this November in the U.S. Northeast (see the dates here). There are no Canadian shows as of yet, but now that Costello resides in Vancouver for part of the year with his wife Diana Krall and their family, he says he would love to play more often north of the 49th.

"There are parts of Canada that I haven't been to in many years, and there are parts of Canada that for some reason I never managed to play," Costello admits. "After 35 years there's still places where I'm making my debut. I managed to play Luxembourg this year for the first time, and Derry [Ireland] for the first time, so there's still hope for Nova Scotia. I mean, my hope for it."
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Mikeh »

The Daily MIrror had a short review which gave the album 3 stars (out of 5) and called EC "a doom-monger" with "often suspect vocals" but picked out Tripwire for high praise.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.wbur.org/npr/224505408/quest ... g-together

?uestlove And Elvis Costello On Writing Together

Since NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon launched in 2009, Elvis Costello has been a frequent guest. There, Costello got to work with the show's in-house band, The Roots, and he struck up a professional relationship with the its leader, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson.

That became a friendship — and that friendship eventually blossomed into a collaboration. But as ?uestlove tells it, the story behind Wise Up Ghost, a new album on which The Roots play backing band to Costello, is a little more sinister.

"Me and Steve Mandel did everything but plot a kidnapping and torture this record out of him," ?uestlove says, noting that he and Mandel — the band's recording engineer — had coveted working with Costello for years, but needed a way to catch his ear.

"When I did my initial interview with Lorne Michaels and Jimmy Fallon, and they were giving me scenarios of how this could be a good look for The Roots to take this late-night gig, one of the examples was, 'And Thursday nights, someone like Elvis Costello could come sit in.' So when I quoted that to Steve, the light bulb went off: 'Bing!'" ?uestlove says. "Once we got him on the radar, we had to reprogram ourselves to not geek out. ... We maintained our composure three times in a row, and then after the third appearance it was like, "OK. We got him."

Costello and ?uestlove both recently joined NPR's Arun Rath to discuss making Wise Up Ghost off the cuff — without even alerting a record label first — and the possibilities that emerge when songs are written in rehearsal. Hear more of their conversation at the audio link.

Transcript

ARUN RATH, HOST:

Once again, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath.

Now, if I'm allowed to make the call, check out the coolest musical partnership of the year.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALK US UPTOWN")

RATH: Musician Elvis Costello has been a frequent guest on NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." There, Costello got to work with "Late Night's" in-house band, The Roots. And he struck up a working relationship with the band's leader, Ahmir Thompson, also known as ?uestlove. That became a friendship, and that friendship, a collaboration. Elvis Costello and The Roots have just released a new album. It's called "Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INVASION HIT PARADE")

ELVIS COSTELLO: (Singing) I can tell the time by the color of my skin, and I know my neighbor 'cause he's the one...

RATH: Now, the way I tell the story about the collaboration is the nice version. The way ?uestlove tells it is a bit more sinister.

?UESTLOVE: Me and Steve Mandel did everything but plot a kidnapping and tortured this record out of him.

RATH: Steve Mandel is The Roots' recording engineer.

?UESTLOVE: He declared to me that Elvis Costello is the greatest living artist ever. So when I did my initial interview with Lorne Michaels and Jimmy Fallon, and they were giving me scenarios of how this could be a good look for The Roots to take this late night gig, one of the examples was, quote, "And Thursday nights, you know, like, someone like Elvis Costello can come in and sit in." So when I quoted that to Steve, then the light bulb, bing, went off, and he's like, dude, we can get to Elvis this way.

And then once we got him on the radar, we had to reprogram ourselves to not geek out. You know, I have Japanese imports of "Imperial Bedroom" and, you know, like, none of that stuff, like, nothing. And we maintained our composure three times in a row. And then after the third appearance, then it was like, OK, we got him. Let's get him.

RATH: So, Elvis, when did you become aware of the conspiracy to kidnap you?

COSTELLO: I never...

?UESTLOVE: He's just finding out now.

COSTELLO: Yeah. We're - yeah, yeah.

?UESTLOVE: We're just coming out...

COSTELLO: The room is locked, and I can't get out.

?UESTLOVE: Yeah.

COSTELLO: No, but here's the other way around of it. You know, when I first came into the show, I said to Karriem Riggins, who is a friend of Ahmir's, who plays drums with my wife, Diana Krall. Do you think those guys would play with me if I went on the show? I know they back people sometimes. And so we started having a dialogue about what the song would be. And I thought, well, I made this record with a lot of references to '60s R&B called "Get Happy." And I thought this song, "High Fidelity," maybe would be a good one. And then they said, yeah, we want to do it in the arrangement from 1979 where it was all slowed down and sounded like "Station to Station" by Eddie Bauer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HIGH FIDELITY")

COSTELLO: (Singing) Some things you never get used to, even though you're feeling like another man...

?UESTLOVE: That should have been warning right then...

COSTELLO: That should have been a red flag.

?UESTLOVE: ...that it was trouble Yeah. It was instant red flag that we referred to a one-time-only performance from, like...

COSTELLO: '79.

?UESTLOVE: ...a concert, like, 30 years ago. So...

COSTELLO: But, you know, in going in the room right there and playing them together, I mean, the good thing about the way The Roots work day-to-day for the Fallon show is they're not learning the music two seconds before performance. They're going in and working on the music for the show and their music in an environment where there's no escape from music. It's a tiny - it's like the tech cupboard in most studios that's been converted into a workroom.

So I go in there, and there's literally, you know, we're standing shoulder to shoulder in the best possible sense and learning this song. What I didn't know is that everything is recorded in that room. It's running the whole time. What I now realize was a master plan or dastardly scheme that were these little cells of music, which are no less authentic the foundation of a song than me picking up an acoustic guitar and saying, here's the chords, this is how it goes, let's make it, you know?

RATH: Wow. So clearly, you guys were - are in synch musically. But did you have, like, a master plan, a mission statement when you came - went into this?

COSTELLO: The way we did it there was we started playing without any fear, any prior consultation. And we didn't really make any prior plans between ourselves. We just started playing and reacting to what we heard. And if it was good, it stayed on. If it wasn't, it got erased.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALK US UPTOWN")

COSTELLO: (Singing) Will you walk us uptown and wherever you go you know we will follow. Will you walk us uptown and we'll stand in the light...

RATH: This first song in the new album, "Walk Us Uptown," you know, it's got kind of a rhythmic vibe that reminds me of some of your earlier work, Elvis. It's got kind of like almost like a reggae punch to it. And, ?uestlove, did you have that in mind? Were you a fan of those early records?

?UESTLOVE: Absolutely. You know, it's funny because when we started this record, I had initial fear. I really wanted to sort of suppress what I was known for. I didn't want it be that groove heavy. But then, you know, I sort of realized, like, you know, a lot of his earlier work, I mean, half that stuff could have been break beats in hip-hop circles, you know what I mean?

RATH: Right.

?UESTLOVE: Pretty much, I wanted to channel in the spirit of it. I didn't want this to be a footnote in his history. I wanted this to be as an important of a statement as "Trust" was or as "This Year's Model" or, you know, any of his records.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WALK US UPTOWN")

COSTELLO: (Singing) Will you hail down that flag and dishonor that vow 'cause we must not change its color now. Could you walk us uptown...

?UESTLOVE: "Walk Us Uptown" wasn't my personal intention for starting off the record. Initially, I wanted to take a super risk and start the album off with a slow song. It's like one of the last songs that we cut, a song very deep and personal to him, a little too personal.

COSTELLO: It's a song that's called "The Puppet Has Cut His Strings," and it only appears on the...

?UESTLOVE: The deluxe version.

COSTELLO: ...on the deluxe version. And it's not just - if you're going to call it deluxe, it better be that. And "Puppet" was a beautiful piece that Ahmir and Ray Angry conceived. And I sat at home and wrote one draft of the lyrics, and I actually recorded the vocals sitting on my kitchen counter on my computer. And then Ahmir wouldn't let me re-record that vocal because it was...

?UESTLOVE: Hell no.

COSTELLO: ...very to the point.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PUPPET HAS CUT HIS STRINGS")

COSTELLO: (Singing) Why is your face drawn on so glum, old chum?

That last piece of music just was moving to me. Then I couldn't do anything else that confront this one subject. That occurred to me while I was returning to England for the first time since my father passed. And it was like all of the chaos of the world as we were living through in that moment was, you know, contained also in the chaos of his mind in the last months, something that many people experienced looking at a loved one in the last stages of a dementia-related illness. Before I could stop myself, I'd written the last hours and days, a description, a literal description.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PUPPET HAS CUT HIS STRINGS")

COSTELLO: (Singing) Time is meaningless. We carried you on buckled limbs through mournful airs and martyrs hymns then one blue and one more yellow pill...

You try to not to be too selfish when you're working with people for the first time. You're not telling all your stories. So to write a song that was deeply personal seemed like a selfishness to me in this context. But it came out before I could stop it. And then Ahmir wanted to open the record with it.

?UESTLOVE: But for me, I feel like an artist of your caliber, songs are very therapeutic. And, you know, I kind of expected you to use this open canvas as your playground.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE PUPPET HAS CUT HIS STRINGS")

COSTELLO: (Singing) The puppet has cut his strings.

RATH: Is there any chance that - I imagine the late night schedule makes things tough - any chance that you guys would - can tour together?

?UESTLOVE: Elvis is the one that's busy.

(LAUGHTER)

?UESTLOVE: Ball in your court. But, no, you know, the information's not going to leave my head ever. So, I mean, if ever there's time for us to do anything together, yeah, absolutely. I welcome it.

COSTELLO: You know, it's been a great joy to do it, even though there's so many dark and kind of sometimes, you know, horrifying images in this record. It would be a pleasure.

RATH: Gentlemen, thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure.

?UESTLOVE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Really, the pleasure's mine.

RATH: That's Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson and Elvis Costello. Their album together, with The Roots, is called "Wise Up Ghost."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHE'S PULLING OUT THE PIN")

COSTELLO: (Singing) She's pulling out the pin that lets her hair fall down...

RATH: And for Sunday, that's WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. Thanks for joining us from our new home at NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. Check out our weekly podcast. Search for WEEKENDS on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED on iTunes or on the NPR smartphone app. Click on Programs and scroll down. We're back with more next weekend. Until then, thanks for listening and have a great week. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/mus ... e14437501/

How Costello and Questlove made one of the year’s most talked-about albums

It could (and probably should) be argued that wacked-out pairings, such as Lou Reed and Metallica’s 2011 collaboration, Lulu, results in healthy musical hybrids – if not for the final product, at least for the effort. Lulu was heavily appraised if nothing else, which indicates a certain level of fascination. Pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman, in his review, wrote, “If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this.”

A kinder suspicion and deeper anticipation greeted the news last year that the Roots had allied with Elvis Costello on a project involving the R&B reimagination of the bespectacled singer-songwriter’s past catalogue. Bringing different kinds of music into the same space has never been alien to Costello, who rewrites the book on interesting partnerships. He has connected in the past with the martini-pop maestro Burt Bacharach, the bayou music box Allen Toussaint and the Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.

What is intriguing with Wise Up Ghost, the true-aiming artist’s marvellous new album with the Roots, is its tentative beginnings, its momentum and morphing, and the growth of the multicultural and cross-generational union between Costello and the Roots leader Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson. The result is one of the most talked-about records of the year – not counting the blockbusters – and the hopeful banishment of the phrase “unlikely collaboration” from the lexicon evermore.

“From where I’m standing, it’s completely natural,” says Costello of the project. “There are no affectations to it.” At the moment, Costello is standing in the New York home he shares with his wife, the Canadian vocal-jazz pianist Diana Krall. (They have twin sons, speaking of collaborations.) “I’ve gotten over the fact that every record you make has to be on an equal footing.”

In 2009, Costello was to appear on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, for which Thompson and the Roots are the house band. Costello rang Kareem Wiggins, a drummer who works with Krall, and asked him if he thought the Roots would back him for the appearance. Unbeknownst to Costello, Thompson was laying the groundwork for what would become Wise Up Ghost. Costello and the high-haired drummer are unabashed music nerds; Thompson would need to dig deep to impress his counterpart.

And so, for Costello’s walk-on music, the Roots played an old British commercial jingle that originally featured young Costello and his singing father, Ross MacManus. For the performance itself, an obscure variation of Costello’s High Fidelity was settled upon. The track is off 1980’s Get Happy, an album influenced by soul and southern R&B.

Costello would appear twice more on the show; last spring, Thompson pitched his long-formulating project to Costello.

Asked about his past outside-the-box collaborations, Costello brings up 2004’s Il Sogno, a ballet score for orchestra commissioned by Italy’s Aterballetto dance company. “Do I think I’m as good as Tchaikovsky?” asks Costello, referring to the Russian composer who wrote operas and received news from Chuck Berry. “Of course not. But why would you not have the experience? It’s like looking at a roller coaster. You want to know what it feels like, even if you don’t ever do it again. And of course you come out of it with something of value.”

Looking back on the earliest days of what would become Wise Up Ghost, the respect between Thompson and Costello was two-way. The former said of the latter in a Mojo magazine feature, “I didn’t want to be the bad guy that put a stain on his legacy.” Costello laughs when that quote is brought up. “Well, I didn’t want to be the bad guy who drove the Roots down into new-wave hell.”

The original intent of album producer Steve Mandel was to recast Costello lyrics, particularly politically charged ones that would still ring true today. For example, the fierce Stick Out Your Tongue gathers lines from Pills and Soap, Hurry Down Doomsday and National Ransom. “I didn’t feel I had to write about things that were deeply personal and private,” says Costello, “because that would be asking the Roots and Steven and Ahmir to subscribe to whatever experience I was having at the moment.”

At first, the process took the form of Thompson sending Costello beats upon which the reconfigured lyrics were laid. A comfort level developed after a two-day session in Vancouver. Eventually Costello began contributing altogether new lyrics, including highly personal ones for The Puppet has Cut His Strings.

For that track, Costello had been sent a melancholy piece of music. He wrote the words late one night and recorded the vocals on his computer at his kitchen counter. “Lyrically, it is the exact description, or as much as I could tolerate it, of my dad’s last hours,” says Costello, whose father (like Thompson’s father) was a working musician. “Ahmir wouldn’t let me change the lyrics, and he wouldn’t let me sing it again.”

Thompson had conceived of the original music as the opening of the album, but Costello stipulated that the finished song be used as the last of the three bonus tracks. The deal was that it be placed at the end, because Costello didn’t want to hear it on each listen of the record. “It has to be the very last thing to give people, because I don’t want to go to that place every time.”

To Costello, the Accidents Will Happen singer, the song is a symbol of what can occur when trust is put into something unperceived, and within a journey into the artistic unknown. “We travelled all that way, from the first idea of playing some songs for an occasion, to writing about the loss of someone that you would feel the most. That’s a pretty good piece of travelling, among a group of people who didn’t know each other very well.

“That’s lucky.”
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://focus.levif.be/culture/musique/e ... 10491.html

Google translation: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl ... 10491.html


Elvis Costello and The Roots - Wise Up Ghost

Pour Wise Up Ghost, Elvis Costello collabore avec le groupe hip hop The Roots. Une combinaison gagnante pour un disque rongé par une colère sourde.

4 stars (out of 5)

Première difficulté: où classer l'objet? En rock? Funk? Hip hop? Il y a des associations qui sonnent comme les plus naturelles du monde. Celle d'Elvis Costello et du groupe hip hop The Roots a quant à elle au minimum de quoi surprendre...

D'un côté, Costello, 35 ans de métier, avec et sans ses Attractions, lancé sur la vague punk-new wave dès la fin des seventies, un trentaine d'albums empilés depuis... De l'autre, The Roots, groupe/collectif hip hop qui fut le premier à démontrer qu'une formation rap pouvait se passer de sampler et privilégier une approche full "instrumentale", tout en restant crédible. Le point de connexion entre les deux?

Il faut d'abord rappeler que cela fait déjà pas mal de temps que Costello multiplie les pas de côtés, par exemple pour des virées plus jazz ou classiques (avec le Brodsky Quartet ou pour la compagnie de danse Aterballetto...). Quant à The Roots, l'ouverture d'esprit est une de leurs marques de fabrique, rappelant au passage que, par essence, le rap a toujours été un ogre boulimique qui bouffe à tous les rateliers, genres, styles... Aux Etats-Unis, le groupe officie d'ailleurs depuis plusieurs années dans le Late Night, show de Jimmy Fallon, en tant que backing band de luxe pour les invités musicaux de l'émission. Ce serait d'ailleurs lors d'un passage de Costello chez Fallon que le rapprochement entre les deux parties se serait fait. Wise Up Ghost est le résultat de cette collaboration inédite.

Pour autant, la première surprise du disque est peut-être... qu'il n'en offre pas. A l'inverse de certains essais (au hasard, le naufrage Lulu, où Lou Reed flirtait avec Metallica), Wise Up Ghost sonne en effet comme une évidence. Dès Walk Us Uptown, tout semble couler de source, les effluves reggae renvoyant même à certaines productions du Costello des débuts. Chacun est pourtant bien à sa place: la voix reconnaissable entre mille de Costello d'une part, le groove de The Roots de l'autre, porté par le jeu de batterie typique de Questlove (Come the Meantimes, Grenade... ). Avec ce dernier, leader officieux des Roots, Costello a d'ailleurs trouvé du répondant, les deux partageant une même tendance à l'encyclopédisme musical. On imagine les longues discussions en studio, les anecdotes échangées par dizaines...

A cet égard, Wise Up Ghost se nourrit régulièrement du parcours même d'Elvis Costello, multipliant les clins d'oeil et les citations. Cinco Minutos Con Vos (avec La Marisoul du groupe latino La Santa Cecilia) fait par exemple écho à Shipbuilding, dénonçant à l'époque la guerre des Malouines. Stick Out Your Tongue est une relecture de Pills and Soap (sur l'album Punch the Clock, 1983). Cela en dit long également sur l'humeur du moment. Viceroy's Row, par exemple, a des allures de funk politisé. Sous des dehors plutôt ronds, Wise Up Ghost se nourrit ainsi d'une tension sourde, régulièrement atterré par le monde et sa marche folle. Même If I Could Believe, la ballade de fin, se termine dans le vinaigre et une certaine forme de désespoir, ponctuée de cordes dramatiques. Costello, cet éternel jeune homme en colère...
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sweetest punch
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://gaffa.dk/anmeldelse/76397

Google translation: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl ... se%2F76397

Elvis Costello And The Roots
Wise Up Ghost – And Other Songs


5 stars (out of 6)

Eminent samarbejde mellem Costello og verdens bedste backingband

Der har været mange forskellige genreafstikkere i Elvis Costellos karriere, noget man ikke behøver noget indgående kendskab til manden for at være klar over, og denne gang har den mangfoldige musiker slået pjalterne sammen med The Roots. Resultatet er funky og fremragende.

Inspireret af Muscle Shoals-studierne, hvor førende afro-amerikanske artister som Duane Allman og Wilson Pickett jammede med hvide studiemusikere, har Costello valgt de elskelige og eklektiske håndspillede hiphoppere i The Roots til at levere soul og hiphop-feeling til sin nye samling sange, der for fleres vedkommende trækker tråde tilbage til Costellos eget bagkatalog.

Der er svedigt groove og cool swing, og Costello og rødderne klæder hinanden umanerligt godt, om end frontmandens knækkende soul-funk-vokalhåndtering næppe vil være for alle. Men i det store hele kommer de to i udgangspunktet forskellige musikalske udtryk eminent overens i håndteringen af de stærke sange. Helt bjergtagende bliver det i den formidable Cinco Minutos Con Vos, hvor tredjeparten La Marisoul lige trækker stikket hjem og løfter den musikalske oplevelse til et højere niveau.

Bestemt et projekt, der hører til blandt både Costellos og Roots' bedste samarbejder – og det siger som bekendt en hel del.
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sweetest punch
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/espectacu ... 52262.html

Google translation: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl ... 2.html%231

Elvis Costello no quiere un contrato discográfico

El legendario cantante no tiene planes de hacer más discos, pero eso no significa que ya esté pensando en el retiro

Ha pasado por el rock, el punk, la new wave o la balada romántica y cada concierto suyo es una relación de promiscuidad con todo tipo de guitarra. Pero el legendario Elvis Costello con quien no quiere casarse es con una discográfica, a pesar de que edita ahora el álbum "Wise Up Ghost" junto a The Roots.

"No tengo contrato discográfico ni quiero tenerlo. No tengo planes de hacer más discos. He hecho ya treinta. Eso no significa que me retire, pero las canciones vendrán cuando tengan que venir y yo esté listo para escribirlas" , asegura Costello en una entrevista .

"Wise Up Ghost" es, entonces, el canto de cisne del músico británico en la publicación convencional y rompe una decisión ya tomada.

"Hace años que decidí ser un músico de directo. Quiero que quien quiera saber qué es lo nuevo de Elvis Costello venga a comprobarlo en cada concierto" , asevera. Harto de tener que elegir sencillos y de sucumbir a la industria decidió no publicar nunca más, pero algo en 2009 le hizo postergar esa promesa que tenía consigo mismo.

Sucedió en una entrevista en el "talk show" televisivo de Jimmy Fallon, que se graba en el Rockefeller Plaza de Nueva York, donde concede esta entrevista. Allí interpretó en directo las canciones "High Fidelity" y "I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea" y se "enamoró" de la banda del programa: The Roots, liderada por Questlove.

Según Questlove, lo que parece fruto de una casualidad fue "en realidad un secuestro a cámara lenta" , un sueño que los componentes de The Roots ya habían tejido en su imaginación.

"Llevamos 896 programas y, evidentemente, no hemos hecho un disco con cada músico que ha pasado por allí" , bromea el también DJ del Brooklyn Bowl de Nueva York, donde presentaron en directo "Whise Up Ghost" ante apenas 800 personas entre las pistas de bolos.

"Elvis Costello nos permitió lo que muchos artistas nunca nos dejaron hacer: tomar su material y hacer con él lo que quisiéramos. Él no estaba promocionando la marca 'Elvis Costello'. Había libertad allí" , asegura.

Cuatro años después publican este disco de 11 canciones, en el que Questlove, afín al hip hop, se flexibiliza igual que su ídolo a través de temas como la romántica "Tripwire" , la explosiva "She Might Be a Grenade" o el tema que abre el disco, "Walk us Uptown" . Un paseo por muchas texturas que rezuman buena química y mejor sonido.

Costello, que ha colaborado con artistas como Paul McCartney o Burt Bacharach, siempre había sido así de libre. Baste recordar cuando fue vetado de otro programa de televisión, el "Saturday Night Live" , cuando en 1977 se saltó el guión y cantó la canción que le dio la gana. Pero no era delirio de estrella. Él fue así cuando no fue nadie, cuando fue una estrella y ahora mismo, volviendo casi a lo experimental.

"Esta actitud no es el privilegio, no es vivir de las rentas. Cuando empecé saqué tres singles con una compañía independiente, pero todavía trabajaba en una oficina. Luego, más tarde saqué mi disco y lo había hecho durante mis días de libranza. Nunca me he atado a nada" , asegura.

Eso sí, ahora disfruta su vida familiar. "Mi mujer (la diva del jazz Diana Krall) también se dedica a esto, así que tenemos que turnarnos para cuidar a los niños y no, felizmente, no tengo tiempo para salir demasiado por ahí de bares como solía hacer" , bromea.

Lo que solía hacer y sigue haciendo es, en primer lugar, ofrecer unos impecables directos y, en segundo, ser más que comprometido con sus letras.

Así, el cantante de "Pump it up" establece paralelismos o incluso habla de secuelas de algunas de sus canciones activistas en su juventud. "Stick out your Tongue" (saca la lengua) sería para él equivalente a aquél "Pills and Soap" que dedicó con sorna a Margaret Thatcher.

También recupera, treinta años después de la composición de "Shipbuilding" , las atrocidades cometidas en la guerra de las Malvinas en un nuevo tema titulado en español "Cinco minutos con vos" , en el que colabora la artista latina Marisoul, vocalista de la formación La Santa Cecilia de Los Ángeles (Estados Unidos) .

"Personalmente tengo un problema con aquella guerra. Siendo una parte muy documentada de la historia parece que la gente no sabe que algunas personas fueron llevadas a lugares indeterminados y torturadas por policía secreta de países que se consideran democráticos" , rememora Costello.

"No es una teoría de la conspiración, es un dato. Y no me hace sentir a mí y a mis hijos a salvo con algo así. Por eso decidí recordárselo a la gente" , concluye.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sweetest punch »

http://culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/elvis ... eux-142009

Google translation: http://translate.google.nl/translate?sl ... eux-142009

Elvis Costello pactise avec The Roots sur un album lumineux

L'ancien punk anglais Elvis Costello acoquiné avec le groupe de rap américain The Roots ? Sur le papier, c'était le projet le plus intrigant de cette rentrée. Mais rien n'assurait que cet attelage hors norme allait déboucher sur un Ovni réussi. A l'arrivée, Elvis Costello et the Roots tiennent leur promesse et nous offrent avec l'album "Wise Up Ghost" la plus réjouissante surprise du mois.

Ceux qui ont suivi Elvis Costello après 1980 savent que l'auteur de "Alison", "Pump it Up" et "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea" s'est affranchi très tôt des étiquettes punk puis new wave bien trop étroites pour lui avant de s'en aller explorer la soul ("Get Happy!" déjà en 1980) puis toutes les musiques américaines au gré de ses pérégrinations. La liste est trop longue.

Rappelons juste que ces dernières années, ses recherches l'ont encore conduit à la Nouvelle Orléans où il a collaboré avec Allen Toussaint, géniale figure du rythm 'n blues, sur l'album "The River in reverse" (2006), ainsi qu'à Nashville, déjà visité à l'époque d'"Almost Blue" (1981), pour deux récents albums, "Secret, Profane & Sugarcane" (2009) et "National Ransom" (2010).

Les Roots sont plus qu'un groupe de rap
On ne l'avait cependant jamais vu frayer avec un groupe de rap. Et en réalité on ne l'y verra pas davantage cette fois. Car The Roots, dont le rappeur en chef Black Thought est ici absent, est plus qu'un groupe de rap. C'est d'abord, et de façon incontestable, le meilleur groupe de musiciens hip-hop. Et c'est aussi, même si le terme peut paraître désuet, un orchestre hors pair. Cette formation tout terrain accompagne en effet depuis quatre ans les invités musicaux variés du talk show américain à succès The Jimmy Fallon show.

C'est d'ailleurs au Jimmy Fallon que s'est noué l'avenir de ce projet. Là qu' Elvis Costello et Questlove, batteur et éminence grise des Roots, se sont croisés, reconnus et appréciés au fil des passages (trois) de l'Anglais à l'émission. "Elvis était totalement ouvert à l'idée que nous réinterprétions à notre façon "Less Than Zero" et "(I don't want to go to) Chelsea", se souvient Questlove. Lorsque le projet d'album commun a germé, il a d'ailleurs d'abord été question de faire un disque de reprises de Costello. Mais l'entente était telle qu'ils ont rapidement opté pour des compositions nouvelles.

Un disque très soul
Le résultat est réussi. On évitera ici les superlatifs à l'emporte pièce du genre "meilleur album de Costello depuis trente ans" et autres considérations réductrices. Malgré quelques longueurs et une poignée de titres dispensables, "Wise Up Ghost" est juste un disque qui coule comme miel dans nos oreilles à l'approche de l'automne. On est ici à la fois en terrain familier et en terre inconnue. Chez le Costello de la charnière 70 et 80 (pensez "Armed Force" et "Get Happy!"), mais tapant le boeuf avec Curtis Mayfield et Isaac Hayes. Et le tout réalisé sans "deadline ni label en jeu". Libres.

La voix et le phrasé si particuliers d'Elvis Costello sont ici constamment au tout premier plan, les Roots déroulant sur mesure pour leur hôte le tapis rouge et moelleux de compositions groovy au climat chaud, plus ou moins rythmées, langoureuses ou sinueuses. Avec, pour couronner le tout, la production maniaque de Steven Mandel, collaborateur de longue date des Roots, qui ajoute une clarté surnaturelle à l'ensemble, en rendant chaque micro-détail (murmure, clochette, blip, corde) perceptible.

A écouter en priorité : le titre d'ouverture "Walk Us Uptown" aux accents presque ska, la montée jouissive et sans fin de "Refuse to be Saved", "Stick Out Your Tongue" qui revisite audacieusement "Pills and Soap" (sur "Punch The Clock" en 1983), "Wake Me Up" sur lequel la voix s'enroule merveilleusement sur le Rhodes et les cuivres, la somptueuse ballade "Tripwire", les guitares et les cordes cinématographiques de "Wise Up Ghost" et l'envoûtant et sinueux "Viceroy's Row" avec sa trompette discrète, ses choeurs et le phrasé plus équilibriste que jamais de Costello.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by johnanderson »

I received my vinyl copy of WUG this afternoon.

I gave it a spin tonight and it is very lovely indeed.

Inspired by that, I've just dug out Blood and Chocolate. There isn't much comparison really. I Want You is playing as I type. It is far superior to anything on WUG. A good new album, but still haunted by better ghosts from an illustrious past.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Here's a review of a different sort:

He wants Young Elvis to sing it not 58/9 year old Elvis! And less repetition...

No surprise that nothing is as good as I Want You on it. One of his greatest moments. Mine yet to arrive, but via the Brooklyn bootleg, with a couple of Apple appearance visits too, I'm totally falling for Tripwire. The above review starts with a brief snippet, and I'm aching to hear it, but I refuse to give in!

In terms of sheer loveliness, when he did last write something to match this song? I struggle to think.

Funny thing is, I couldn't get what all the refs to a Satellite sample or ref were. I'd somehow completely forgotten the little glockenspiel motif at the opening of Satellite that run throughout Tripwire, though it's only v brief there, and doesn't have the same curious rhythmic emphasis that Tripwire has in the main repeated phrase that is subtly but wonderfully effective.

I'd never heard of Diane Birch. Someone here was a big fan. Am checking her out on YouTube, e.g. 'Nothing But A Miracle'. Pretty good, strong voice.

Was it Tripwire made you choke a bit, Poor Dep, among other moments. Who would vote it best song on the album?
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johnanderson
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by johnanderson »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:Here's a review of a different sort:



Was it Tripwire made you choke a bit, Poor Dep, among other moments. Who would vote it best song on the album?
Tripwire is lovely. And it will likely be the one song that escapes the Roots treatment to make it onto an Elvis live set.

My favourite track is Come The Meantimes. There is so much going on musically and lyrically that I hear new stuff every play.

And it is funky :D
Poor Deportee
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

Many great moments on here. But, Otis, I still find "Tripwire" to be its the most moving moment (although "Puppet" is obviously very strong too, a close second - but I think it's helped along a bit by the author's backstory, which is arguably inadmissible in terms of assessing the song as such). "Tripwire" seems to me an achingly sad documentation of the eternal human "tripwire" whereby we render other people beyond the pale; and pretty soon you have Anne Frank saying things like

Don't open the door 'cause they're coming
Don't open the door 'cause they're here...


Despite the wistful thought that there might be "more to forgiveness/than all we conveniently forget," we never do learn. Hell, we've lived through it in our own time, as we rushed to bomb and invade and torture after 9/11.

Above there's an ominous humming
Below there's a murmuring prayer


The delivery is tender, exquisite. Think how diminished the simple - and profound - truth of the closing statement would be if he gave it his patented sneering vibrato. No; here he avoids all such traps, and one of his simplest, most poignantly perfect songs comes fully to life. I'll rank this with any track he's done. Not as showy as "I Want You," certainly. But so powerful, in its quiet way.

As for "Come the Meantimes," Johnanderson is right; a grand pop confection. I especially love that descending baritone bit ("he came back!") and rather wish it had recurred for one more go-round before the end. This song should be a single. I might add that it's yet another example of the profligate religious evocations on this album, the "HE" in question being a clear echo of Christ...or maybe the real thing Himself.

And while it isn't my favourite cut by any means, I'd also like to put in a good word for a song that seems to be underrated, i.e., "Cinco Minutos Con Vos." Unlike anything else in his standard repertoire, I like the vibe this gives of Elvis as an Englishman in an exotic far-flung situation a la Graham Greene. (Akin in this sense to "Bullets for the New Born King," with quite a different backdrop). An evocative duet that, against all odds, seems to work very nicely on this record.
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johnfoyle
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by johnfoyle »

Q, Nov. '13

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Neil.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Neil. »

johnfoyle wrote:Q, Nov. '13

Image
"Elvis Costello's tired output this century"- so untrue! At least he gave the new one a good review, though.
Poor Deportee
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

Regrettable that a fair chunk of reviewers feel required to praise this album via a contrast with his supposedly "inferior" recent work :roll: - especially given that this record follows one that most of his actual listeners consider to be among his most inspired. I've never had much time for EC's whining about aspects of the industry, including critics, but this sort of fatuous commentary does incline me to a bit of sympathy. How lame.
When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns
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thepopeofpop
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by thepopeofpop »

John wrote:The album entered the UK chart at number 28 today which is Elvis' highest chart position since the number 17 position When I Was Cruel reached in 2002. It was at 21 in the midweek chart and I guess it will disappear next week.

Called in to HMV Uxbridge today - no sign of it anywhere.
Number 40 in the Australian chart - also the highest chart position since When I Was Cruel, and also the highest position ever for The Roots, from the official Australian chart site:

"No.40 WISE UP GHOST – Elvis Costello & The Roots. By collaborating with US hip hop band The Roots, UK singer Elvis Costello has scored his first Top 40 album since When I Was Cruel (No.34 May ’02). Wise Up Ghost is not the first time The Roots have charted with a collaborative effort, having charted with John Legend on Wake Up! (No.42 Oct. ’10). The Roots were last in the charts with Undun (No.66 Dec. ’11)."

http://www.ariacharts.com.au/news/33225/chartifacts
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