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

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

Post by Lester Burnham »

I'm prepared for Elvis to once again start shouting that he won't ever be making any new music again, like he does every few years, and to return to touring, perhaps debuting a new song here and there, perhaps recording an album whenever he feels like it. He's obviously struck gold with the Spinning Songbook, so instead of Elvis going to Vegas for a several-year run, it'll be the inverse: Vegas will follow him with the Songbook.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but the man has stated that his priorities have shifted somewhat, that he wants to be around for his family and to provide a semi-stable life for them. While I thought three years ago that National Ransom was a graceful way to bow out, now I'm saying the same about Wise Up Ghost. I'm just prepared for the eventuality that he won't be as prolific now that he was 10 years ago, and I think I'm okay with that.

That being said, the chart placements for Wise Up Ghost have been really good so far, so maybe that will be some motivation for him to keep going.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by verbal gymnastics »

cwr wrote:I still think that Costello has one semi-surefire way to score a "hit" record, and that's to write and produced an album of new songs written for other singers, and get those singers to agree to appear on the album. It would involve calling in favors from friends like Paul McCartney, but I'll bet if Costello put together a "songbook" type album where he aimed for his wishlist, he would get most of them, maybe even all of them, to agree to appear. If he thought he had a great song for, say, Beyonce, it would be amazing to see what would happen if he recorded her singing it.
Let's face it - this would be a doable project. Look at the names he could muster - McCartney, Springsteen, U2 (just see the willing participants of Spectacle).
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by A rope leash »

I picked up the deluxe version last week at Hastings. The deluxe version was all they stocked, $16.99.

I didn't get a chance to really listen to it until I went back on the road. I listened to it probably sixteen times that day as I ran the route.

It has that baffling quality that always gets tagged as "interesting", which is a word used in these cases when the actual quality cannot be named..."innovative" might be more appropriate, and if it is both interesting and innovative, all we can hope for is that it is not also irritating.

Which, for me in some places, it is. The catch from Satellite over-sampled on Tripwire is especially annoying. I am not finding the selections for this "career re-mix" to be substantially improved by being hacked up and thrown into a hip-hop salad.

Of course, this is bias, and a certain form of fan frustration. If I had heard this first, and researched the history of Elvis to find the originals, I might find that the originals sucked.

The best stuff on this recording is the new stuff. Cinco Mintutos con vos should get repeated radio play, but this is the guy who is maintaining radio silence from now on, so folks who dream of their hero having a big hit record should probably get back to reality.

I am reminded of Cruel Smile, for reasons that are probably obvious. I keep thinking of Beck's Information...it has a beat that relentlessly refuses to let go and fly. The listener winds up being dragged down, mired in the mud at the end of the runway, stuck but glad to be alive.

So, I think a lot of people will ask, "what is Elvis doing here"? My inclination is to be cynical and accuse Elvis of trying to appeal to a younger audience by making a hit record of the new-style genre. But, if we think about that, we have to first recognize that if Elvis were a new contestant on The Voice, or American Idol, Or The X Factor, or any of those shows designed to appeal to the sensibilities of modern youth, Elvis would be booed off the stage due to the "awfulness" of his singing voice. The sour "gathering flowers in the crack of hours" would only be seen by most youngsters are just that...sour.

(when all us adults know it is so cool)

As i struggled to get into this recording, a certain theme or scheme became apparent. Most if not all of the sampled lyrics are naughty bits from Elvis' career, things he said that no one wanted to hear. Elvis has always been a man with something to say. Can you hear him? If you can, will you heed? This is Elvis saying I told you so years ago, now look.

Wise up.

The next day I ran another route up into the hills, and came across Il Sogno in my door pocket. I listened to it maybe four times that day, all of it right through. I love it, I think it is a great work. It is irritating to see Elvis rehashing his bits when we know he can do more important work. He's getting an honorary doctorate this month, and deserves it. His new release with The Roots manages to fit well with the general course of his career, but it is not his best collaboration. That honor still goes to Painted from Memory, with The River in Reverse trailing a distant second.

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

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

Post by johnfoyle »

A rope leash -

As i struggled to get into this recording, a certain theme or scheme became apparent. Most if not all of the sampled lyrics are naughty bits from Elvis' career, things he said that no one wanted to hear. Elvis has always been a man with something to say. Can you hear him? If you can, will you heed? This is Elvis saying I told you so years ago, now look.

Wise up.
I so agree with this. A combination of being on holiday and work has meant I haven't had the time comment much on WUG. I was lucky enough to get a early listen to it and did so a lot , all the way through August. I kept thinking of how we the fans would know the past songs/riffs etc. that have been reused but they would be new to a lot of listeners and how Elvis might have been thinking ' why didn't you notice them before ?!' . Thanks Rope for putting it way more eloquently.

Needless to say , I still find the album a rewarding , compelling listen. The sequencing is so perfect. I'm glad the extras were left out. Good as they are they would weighed it down, making some slow sections too long and upbeat ones too demanding.

More later...I hope!
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by cwr »

I could be wrong about this, but I think EC's partnership with The Roots might have given him a third or fourth "act" as a recording artist that might not have otherwise occurred.

The Roots have their own studio, and a steady gig which leaves them with a lot of time on their hands, in one of the two cities that Costello calls home.

This takes away a lot of the potential barriers that might have kept Costello out of the recording studio. Add to this Costello and Questlove's boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for music and it just seems unlikely that they will be able to keep away from it for too long.

Costello makes his money from touring, but as he gets older, I would imagine that being on the road (especially in a family where both parents have their own touring schedules) would be the thing that gets more difficult to sustain. I can easily imagine that Costello's relationship with The Roots and Steven Mandel might start to become a little bit like Rick Rubin and Johnny Cash.

After all, hard as it is to believe, Costello is now approaching the age that Cash was when he did the first American Recordings album. (YIKES! We are ALL getting older!)
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Now that I've finally got the damn thing, I find I'm not listening to it much. Hearing it on the hifi didn't thrill me as much as I thought it would. A lot of it falls a little flat. Tripwire is great (not a 'whiney trudge', can't get that awful phrase out of my head). But is much else? Hasn't grabbed me in its totality, maybe I'm playing it too piecemeal.

Also, I'm really not sure I can find an answer to 'why reinvent the backing to Pills and Soap when it's nowhere near as good as the original'. I've heard it many times now and struggle to remember it, other than the additional of a rather pointless 'stick out your tongue'. Similar to seeing the bizarre 'Heritage Orchestra: Joy Division Reimagined' or whatever it was called (got a free ticket, very glad I didn't pay). It reinvented their magnificent music to hell, but added nothing. the visual display was the best part. It closed with Love Will Tear Us Apart with Curtis's voice sampled and set to strings. Just the very sound of this was enough to make you well up, but what they'd done was alter the pitch of the notes so it ended up with an altered melody, and one that was nowhere near as good as the original.

Reinvention that adds little or nothing is a waste of time. I agree the totally new things here are just more interesting, though I quite like the sample of Can You Be True? on the title track.

Also, I've been getting massively back into R.E.M., rediscovering the magnificent Out Of Time, which I used to have on a tape without the song titles on, so outside of the well-known ones, I didn't know the song titles. Now I'm learning them. Last night it was a toss-up between WUG and Murmur, and the latter won. Ironically it's partly the blame of the above-cited 'whiney trudge' man as the same site (righttrackwrongspeed.com) that gave WUG 5/10 revisited Murmur and gave it 10/10.

I find the fixation with sales curious, as if we were Elvis's management team. Aren't good reviews more important? Sales are important to struggling newcomers. Elvis is a rich man with a very rich wife. Live is the payola, as stated, and he's seen plenty of that. Sure it's nice to think of people buying it, but saleswise he will only ever be a relatively marginal figure from here on, and it doesn't matter a jot.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Jack of All Parades »

A rope leash wrote: I am reminded of Cruel Smile, for reasons that are probably obvious. I keep thinking of Beck's Information...it has a beat that relentlessly refuses to let go and fly. The listener winds up being dragged down, mired in the mud at the end of the runway, stuck but glad to be alive.

So, I think a lot of people will ask, "what is Elvis doing here"? My inclination is to be cynical and accuse Elvis of trying to appeal to a younger audience by making a hit record of the new-style genre. But, if we think about that, we have to first recognize that if Elvis were a new contestant on The Voice, or American Idol, Or The X Factor, or any of those shows designed to appeal to the sensibilities of modern youth, Elvis would be booed off the stage due to the "awfulness" of his singing voice. The sour "gathering flowers in the crack of hours" would only be seen by most youngsters are just that...sour.

(when all us adults know it is so cool)

As i struggled to get into this recording, a certain theme or scheme became apparent. Most if not all of the sampled lyrics are naughty bits from Elvis' career, things he said that no one wanted to hear. Elvis has always been a man with something to say. Can you hear him? If you can, will you heed? This is Elvis saying I told you so years ago, now look.

Wise up.
I swear there are days when I hear Alexv in your written voice- he expressed nearly the same thoughts this past weekend as he broke bread at my home. Eerie. The consistent fault I have with the album stems from that incessant drum beat from Ahmir- it rarely varies and too often does 'drag' a song down. :wink: Well done- sir.
"....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 John »

There certainly sounds like there will be more releases.

http://ca.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-th ... 23258.html

Elvis Costello & the Roots: Questlove’s Pipe Dream Isn’t Over
By Craig Rosen | Stop The Presses! – Thu, 3 Oct, 2013 1:45 PM EDT..

It's a safe bet that when the Recording Academy announces the nominees for the 56th Annual Grammy Awards on Dec. 6, you'll be hearing the names Elvis Costello and the Roots. That is, if Grammy members can figure out in which category — or categories — the genre-bending collaboration Wake Up Ghost & Other Stories best fits.

Mixing Costello's legendary wordplay with the Roots' down-and-dirty, funky grooves, the album has already roused one-time Costello devotees from their slumber and has likely converted some Roots followers into Elvis fans, impressed with how the bespectacled Englishman can throw down a rhyme.

If you're already hip to the album, which was released in mid-September, there's good news. More music from the pairing is on the way. Roots drummer and co-leader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson tells us that there will be a new release by Costello & the Roots on the Black Friday version of Record Store Day, fitting since it was on the annual springtime celebration of independent record stores that first saw the release of Wake Up Ghost as a limited-run while label test pressing. "We got something really special coming for that day," he says. And that's not all, Questlove tells us that their live performance at the Brooklyn Bowl on Sept. 16, the eve of the album's official release, "really opened up a whole new good can of worms," hinting there may be even more to come.

The "roots" of the unlikely pairing can be traced to Costello's three appearances on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" on which the Roots serve as the house band, usually jamming with the evening's musical guests. Unbeknownst to Costello, Questlove was a huge fan. But there were clues. During one of his guest spots, Questlove and the Roots dug up music from a U.K. commercial for R White's Lemonade written by Elvis' father, Ross MacManus, and featuring a young Costello, then known as Declan MacManus, on backing vocals and bass. "We found it on the Internet and decided to do it," Questlove says, "and it really floored him. He was like, 'How did you know about that?'"

Little did Costello know, Questlove had been obsessing over him and his music for years. In fact, part of the reason he agreed to take the Fallon gig was that Costello's name was dropped during a meeting with the future talk show host and producer Lorne Michaels. "The scenario that Jimmy said was, 'The cool thing is you can have your friends in, so you can have Q Tip sit in on Tuesday, Herbie Hancock could sit in on Wednesday, and Elvis Costello could sit in on a Thursday.' And when I went home to tell [friend and producer] Steve [Mandel] how the meeting went and gave him those hypothetical examples, a light bulb went off in his head and he said, 'Yo, now you must take this 'Late Night' gig so we can be down can be down with Elvis.' It was like a pipe dream."

Questlove discovered Costello while growing up in Philadelphia in what he calls a "three record-collector household." His father's collection had soft pop like Barbra Streisand, James Taylor, and Carole King; while his mom favored jazzier stuff and Earth, Wind & Fire, War and the Average White Band. It was through his older sister that he found Costello. "She was bringing rock stuff home, like Bowie, Queen, the Clash, and Elvis, so I remember seeing Get Happy! and My Aim is True, although I didn't necessarily gravitate towards it when I was 6 or 7," he says.

Yet by the time MTV rolled around, Questlove was a fan. He recalls seeing the video for "Every Day I Write the Book" and says Costello's 1989 album Spike was the first cassette he bought himself.

From age 6 to 16 were "the formative years" of his Costello obsession, Questlove says. He didn't go to "Elvis university" until he was 26, while recording D'Angelo's 2000 album Voodoo with assistant engineer Steve Mandel. "He'd champion Elvis like he was the Lord Jesus Christ. He'd constantly make me all these mix CDs and cassettes of things I should know," Questlove says. "He made me [Costello's 1982 masterpiece] Imperial Bedroom, because I was really into [the Beach Boys'] Pet Sounds reissue. He said this is Elvis' art record." He adds that Costello's haunting song of obsession "I Want You" from 1986's Blood & Chocolate "is pretty much the soundtrack to every relationship I've ever had."

For his part, Costello says he was a fan of the Roots when they took the Fallon gig and admired how they were able to turn it on and off in the confines of a TV studio. "When you have an occasion to be on a movie set, you realize it takes a different sort of mentality to give it your best; they say action and you have to give it your best, the same thing goes for playing music on TV, it could be a soul-damning thing or a liberating thing," Costello says.

And once he began collaborating with the band for his appearances on Fallon, he realized there was the potential of a future collaboration. "They have this tiny room where they lock themselves in playing the music for the evening's show and making records at the same time, which has been very creative for them, and the sense of adventure with which we approached my appearances pretty gave us pretty much all the tools we needed. And then we only needed the will to make a record after that," he says.

It was during his first appearance on "Late Night" that Costello also noted that the Roots had a deep knowledge of his music. "When I got to the studio, the Roots had referenced a long-abandoned arrangement of 'High Fidelity' that I developed with the Attractions that I had left behind after we realized that we couldn't play like David Bowie's Station to Station band, and then we sped the song up and that's the rendition we put on record. But the Roots getting hold of that groove, they made it sound like the way I kind of dreamed the song originally. Not superior to our version, just different," he says.

Initially, the plan was to record new versions of Costello classics with fresh arrangements courtesy of the Roots, but then this changed once they started with Costello's "Pills and Soap" from 1983's Punch the Clock. "There's nothing to be gained by doing a straight recitation of the original lyric and revisiting the world of 30 years ago and not making any further comment as if the world hasn't moved on," Costello says. "Yes, certain things that were lies that were being told to us and certain inequalities still exist, but I wanted to connect it to other times, specifically the media focus."

Questlove was also a bit hesitant to possibly muck up Costello's classics by "remixing" them. "I didn't want to look like the guy that just burst into his world and did some asinine experiment against his will," he says.

So instead, Costello and the Roots created new songs that referenced some of his past classics, such as the "Pills and Soap" update "Stick Out Your Tongue" and "Cinco Minutos Con Vos," which looks at the flipside of the Falkland's War-inspired "Shipbuilding," by examining Argentina at a time when many of its citizens were disappearing at the hands of the government. Marisol "La Marisoul" Hernandez guests on that track, singing verses in Spanish.

"He was digging through his old catalog like a hip-hopper digs through his old beats to make something new, and that's what we ended up doing," Questlove says.

Given Questlove's and Costello's busy schedules, some of the initial songwriting for the album was done via email. "It was done in all sorts of stolen hours," Costello says. "Steve Mandel would email me if I was on the road somewhere, whether in Europe, to the West in America or Canada, I might get an email at 11 o'clock at night, which is 2 in the morning for him, saying, 'I just finished mixing this. This is a couple of parts we got down tonight with [Roots guitarist Captain] Kirk [Douglas], or we worked on the drums and I worked on these vocals you recorded.'"

For Questlove, the sessions kept getting better, especially when they all found time to get into the studio together. "The best songs came at the very last minute." He points to "Sugar Won't Work" and the deluxe edition bonus track "The Puppet Has Cut His Strings," which Questlove says Costello used "as a therapeutic moment to mourn his father's death."

In the end, they had so much material, they added bonus tracks to a deluxe version of the album and also have some material to release for Black Friday. Yet Questlove says that the Roots "pipe dream" with Costello is not over.

"This is not going to be the end," he says. Ghosts don't go away that easily.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

I am baffled by lukewarm responses from the hardcore fans. This remains, to my ears, a dazzling record that returns EC to the pop sensibilities that marked the great years of 'Trust,' IB, etc.. (Of course it does this in a unique fashion; it's not about "going home again" in any literal sense, more about bringing back that spirit into his work). One way to put this is to say that this is the coolest EC has sounded in years. Anyone who doesn't like "Tripwire" is simply not vibrating on the same frequency as I am. Different strokes, I guess.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by cwr »

Well, I think for me the interest in sales-- not a fixation, really, just a casual interest-- is that it matters somewhat to Costello, and has an effect on whether or not he has any interest in making more records.

After all, SP&SC did surprisingly well, and it spurred him to head right back into the studio to make NR with T Bone. Poor sales of NR led to him deciding to take a 3 year break from making new records. So, I think it does have a little bit of relevance to fans if you have a passing interest in him continuing to make records instead of just touring with the Spinning Songbook.

I also think that, sales or no, WUG is the most a new Costello record has been talked about in years, which is in some ways more important. Recent records have gotten respectable reviews but were almost instantly forgotten and not mentioned again when it was time for critics' year-end "best of" lists. I think WUG will be a record that pops up a lot when 2014 begins and critics are looking back on the year in music, and I think there will be a good campaign for them to get a Grammy, which will again boost interest in the album a bit.

I think it's just got to be frustrating for Costello to make an album like NR and have no one seem to notice except a hardcore base of fans, and it's a little demoralizing. So the sales thing is sort of interesting to me in that I think it is linked to his feelings and attitude as to whether it's worth making any more new records when he's got about 30 of them already and could easily just quit.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by jardine »

I'm finding that as time goes on, no matter what WUG sells, it exists, and the body of ECs work is becoming a more and more spectacular thing. This new arrival adds to that once again no matter what the sales/interest etc. His work isn't exactly for these times and their charts. It is, I believe, more lasting than that and therefore can suffer poorer sales and still survive for anyone interesting in a great musical adventure.

This is said, of course, independent of the economics of such things, but with the Roots' studio nearby, as someone mentioned, hunkering down and recording and creating no matter what, in a way that is cut back on extravagance and gives up the false hopes of the charts, just for the sheer pleasure and curiosity and creative rush of it that he and Quest talk about over and over again... I'm sure all concerned know exactly how good this is, despite any foibles or lapses here and there...I really love it. It is like being in on the most public of underground secrets. Many people don't like it, despite the reviews, but when I look at the top of the charts, all I can say is, well, of course.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Certain amount of going round in circles here with the recent discussion about EC's supposed disenchantment after NR's sales, etc. I really think there's a different perspective here on this side of the Atlantic (or maybe it's just in East Anglia?). My view is he'll always have opportunities to make records, he's too big a name not to, and if he has the inspiration and the context, he will. And if not, well there's a heck of a body of work there.

I was always partial to the notion that he might have a desire to make something a bit KOA pt 2ish in his later years. Something stripped down, fairly acoustic, great songs. That's the album I'd like to hear.

I was very impressed returning to North as a result of the Countdown after a gap of several years and finding it stuffed with great songs and moments. I liked it more than I thought I would. Another album with a similarly strong identity/unity of style but in the above vein is what I'm thinking.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by And No Coffee Table »

Love at First Jam: Elvis Costello on His Collaboration with The Roots (Q&A)
6:20 PM PDT 10/4/2013 by Chris Willman

"I've ended up with this strange career of basically doing what the f--- I want," Costello tells THR. His latest effort, "Wise Up Ghost," may be the musician's most rhythmic yet.

When music fans heard that Elvis Costello was collaborating with the Roots, a few wondered if he might be making his first hip-hop album. Their recently released Wise Up Ghost does have the Rock Hall of Famer eschewing complex melodic turns for vocals that are nearly recitatives over some fairly spare, bottom-heavy beats. But he already had a history of that: You might go back and consider wordy classics like “Pump It Up,” “Tokyo Storm Warning,” and “Episode of Blonde” closer to being rap records than this one is.

Wise Up Ghost, which debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 chart, but it feels like it lands somewhere between Gil-Scott Heron and the Specials as much as it does in the realm of crossover between modern rock and hip-hop. Count it as another surprise from Costello, who was considered a punk progenitor 35 years ago but had his first country album in the works just four years into that wildly varied career. And mark it down as another gold star for the Roots, whose ability to back anyone on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon certainly extended to Elvis, who had no idea he was the personal hero of both Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and Steven Mandel, the new album’s co-producers and co-writers.

“Right when I was least expecting it, the invitation to do this emerges in the most enigmatic way,” Costello tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I think Ahmir would tell you it had been a dastardly scheme that they’d had cooked up from the moment I walked in the building. But I find that very charming, because I never would have imagined that they would think of me that way. I’m not thinking everybody’s queuing up to work with me. Completely on the converse, when I went in first to the Fallon show, I didn’t have any new records to present… and I said ‘Do you think the Roots would back me if I came on the show?’ -- because I didn’t know what the rules were. It seems funny to say it, now that I know they’ve said they were scheming to do this from day one.”

When he did that fateful first Fallon appearance, the Roots suggested messing with an old arrangement of “High Fidelity” they’d discovered on a bootleg, and it was love at first jam. That culminated in a new album that incorporates odd musical or lyrical allusions to more than 15 older Costello tunes, befitting the level of geekery that super-fans Thompson and Mandel brought to the table.

Costello talked to THR about the text and subtext of these new songs, along with his ongoing Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour and his recent appearance at Apple’s latest iPhone unveiling.

You said not too long ago that you might be done making albums, and that the whole business of that was too aggravating, compared to just making a reliable living touring. There’s been a great history of artists who make false threats to retire from touring -- like Sinatra and Bowie -- but you’re the guy who’s threatening to retire from recording.

I like to learn from the masters. If Frank can do it and David Bowie can do it, I guess I can do it. You know the expression “f--- off money”? Well, you don’t actually need to have it in your pocket; you just need to have the intention. It’s not more important than the well-being of those you care about to indulge yourself. And from time to time, people who think you’re just being dramatic will assume that you’re just offended by a misunderstanding of something you did or the failure of a record to set the world on fire. But in fact, it’s not having such arrogance as to think you have a natural right to carry on all the time… I’ve had this feeling of wanting to leave a number of times -- and acted on it a number of times; phased myself out until it’s time to come back. I don’t have any problem with having said it out loud.

Sorry for the alarm going off on my iPhone. But you know a lot about iPhones now, having just played at the launch event for the new editions.

Yeah. I’ve seen a few of them lately.

Apple was launching iTunes Radio, and I figured “Radio Radio” was probably not appropriate, so maybe that’s why you went all the way back to dig up “Radio Soul” [a more upbeat song Costello recorded in the mid-‘70s but didn’t release until decades later] to play at that event instead.

Actually, I thought “Radio Soul” was a much more subversive song in that context. You’ve got to remember that when I was siting at home [in England] in ’75, in the thrall of Bruce Springsteen, he sort of made it feel like a big dream in America where a radio was playing and it was always the perfect song. And even though there’s sadness in the song, I wanted to believe that somewhere it was like that and it wasn’t like it was in the suburbs, where you couldn’t hear any music you liked half the time. So that was a wishful song. Then, of course, you get into the business of making records and you realize what it’s really about is some guy going off with a big sack of money to give it to somebody with some hookers and cocaine so that they play your record enough times that people get batted to death with it and that makes it a hit. And stations that I encountered when I first came to America, where they’d let you roam through the record library and pull out An Evening with Groucho Marx and follow it with a Howlin’ Wolf record, they were the good guys, but they were very few and far between. By the third time I came to America, they’d been replaced by robots, computers, and consultants. ... There is no radio to be on! The radio is the picture you took of me on that stage singing there. Do I agree with everything they do? Absolutely not. I’m well on record as I’ve had issues with Apple’s accounting over the years. But they have to find their road to redemption the way I did.

Do you find anything hopeful in iTunes Radio or other streaming services as far as replacing terrestrial radio?

Well, I don’t give it a lot of thought. As a matter of personal preference, I would like all of my records to arrive on shellac, let alone vinyl. I like the determination of flipping the record over to hear what’s on the B-side. And I still like a shop where you go in and there’s somebody there who’ll go “This is actually what I think is a really great record -- why don’t you check it out?” That gets harder when it’s just big boxes, if there’s anything at all where you can still browse. But the other side of it is, you’ve got all this interconnected music that lurks out there in some tangle of wires or clouds ... and you can follow them down trails at times that are magical.

With this album, do you feel like there were expectations that arose when news got out that you collaborating with the Roots?

We had almost completed the record when the word got out, so we were free to follow our instinct and the dialogue we established early on, doing it kind of in secret -- not to make it sound very mysterious, but with no record company involved. Different people showed an interest in releasing it, and Don Was and Blue Note were the most ardent suitors and made the best case for how we could present it physically… Ahmir has said a couple of times that he didn’t want to be encouraging me to make it some ill-advised rap record. That was the last thing on my mind. But anyone who thought that would just be assuming because of the billing that that must be what we were doing without actually listening to it.

Not that there aren’t some very melodic songs on it, but it might be your most rhythmic, groove-based record yet...

Sonically it has a different resolution. The initial plan was that the dominant aspects were the beat and the words, and I was less concerned with elaborate melody. In fact, I liked the challenge of coming up with a melody like “Viceroy’s Row,” where there were only two chords in the song. As a matter of fact, in some of those verses there’s only one chord in the song, really. And some of the others are more chant-like or they can’t really claimed as sung. [On the other hand] Steven Mandel’s production is particularly exceptional in the way that he incorporated beautiful orchestrations on top of the groove.

The old songs that are revived here in bits and pieces of your new songs are, for the most part, as with “Pills and Soap,” your most politically charged or socially conscious songs.

Unfortunately, some of these songs are outward-looking to the ways of the world, and some of the things from a long while ago -- or a few years ago, even -- are things that when you write them, you’re [thinking] “I hope that won’t come true.” And it has. It got worse! So, singing it again, you approach it as a whistling-past-the-graveyard sort of thing. You know, if you sing it again, maybe on the third time it’ll go away.

You’ve always had an ear for rearranging your old material.

There have been times when I’ve rearranged songs and people have been bewildered, and then there have been times when I’ve done it and people have found it illuminating in some way. “Every Day I Write the Book” is a good example. I mean, it’s a throwaway song that I wrote in 10 minutes that became a hit. And, in latter years, I've sung it more often the way Ron Sexsmith sang it to me as a ballad, when I suddenly found something beautiful in it that I enjoyed singing much more than I’d ever enjoyed it before. And guess what, when I went back to playing it with a band, I then enjoyed playing it with a band again. I’ve been for three years working with the Spectacular Singing Songbook, which seemed like just a vaudeville trick to some people initially. But it reacquainted the Imposters and I with 150 songs that we had at our resources, and made our shows richer and more unpredictable -- both in the sense that we could play our oldest songs which were the most anticipated ones in the show with an element of surprise for ourselves, which hopefully really made those songs more vivid, and also brought songs out of the shadows which we’d maybe let get away.

Ahmir did an interview where he said that he basically caught onto you around the time of Goodbye Cruel World [which came out in 1984], and so he got to know your later records before he ever went back to the early ones.

Well, that’s great. If you make an impact early in your career… I’m sort of the opposite of Prince. Warner Bros. supported him for however many records that built a huge underground reputation, but he didn’t break out and have anything like a hit for like four albums or something. Whereas the very first record I made, it may not have sold a massive volume, but it definitely made a really big impact straight-out, and I was pretty well established in the first three records. And then a number of things -- my willfulness; catastrophes in your life and judgment -- take you off the track of this natural kind of trajectory towards some sort of improbable stardom that’s probably going to end up being a miserable existence of no creativity. And then I’ve ended up with this kind of strange career of basically doing what the f--- I want, you know. And sometimes doing it to the exasperation of people who love and adore that first thing and don’t want you to ever change. But it’s actually impossible to keep making the same record again with any authenticity and honesty. You can revisit some of the methods, but if you’re at a different time and place in your life, the result’s going to be quite different -- like the difference between This Year’s Model [from 1978] and Blood and Chocolate [in 1986]. Irrevocably, it’s just four guys playing in a room, but the mood is totally different. And with every record it really should be, to my mind, an advantage that it’s different. I pursued that thought pretty relentlessly in the last 30, 35 years.

Wise Up Ghost feels like a political album, but in a very impressionistic sense. It doesn’t have a lot of specific political references.

Well, it doesn’t have any slogans particularly in it. Except for, like, I suppose the vain appeal of “Will you walk us uptown?” That [represents] people always wanting somebody to come and rescue them rather than them attending to the situation themselves, so they’re subscribing to one set of false promises or one false prophet or another. And that reoccurs throughout it.

At the very end of the album, though, you do end things on a more spiritual or existential note, if not a tremendously more hopeful one, with the title track and “If I Could Believe.” These seem more about the ghost in the machine.

When we started with this group of songs where we had fragments of things which turned into new stories, one of the most curious starting points was this orchestral sample from North that Steven Mandel [presented], and then I wrote all of the words just in relation to that one piece of music sample cycling around and around. And then the Roots went in piece by piece and scored it like it was a movie or something, and it just got more and more frightening-sounding, with all those guitars and discordant horns and Ahmir’s drums. I suppose that that song is more impressionistic than all the others. It’s where the things in the world collide with the things in your life. And I tried to keep my own very, very personal experiences out of these songs, because we were in collaboration, and more about the things we’re all sharing. But I found that was actually impossible in the end, because there are terrors in your life which are reflections or echoes of the terrors you observe. And in “Wise Up Ghost” there’s a description of the room my father ended his days in: “Sitting in a shirt of wire, howling at a wall of flowers,” which is my description of his dementia ward. It’s the same kind of dissolution of sanity and decency that’s in all the other images in that song that deal with the day-to-day stripping away of dignity. So that’s why it says “Wise up, ghost”: It’s like, come on now, we’ve got to get up over -- in spirit, at least.

And "If I Could Believe" -- do you believe?

If you were just wallowing in misery, then it would just be morbid. There’s lot of great and very fashionable courting of darkness in music, and I’m not one of those people. You want to walk right into it, and right through or above it. Otherwise you’re adding to the problems and just saying, “Well, we’re defeated,” and I don’t think we are. I can’t look at my children and say it’s not going to be better. But I don’t say it in a kind of empty-headed, like if-we-just-wish-hard-enough it’ll be better way. We’ve got to actually try. Some of that song is asking a question of why we give up some things so easily; sometimes it’s the wrong fight that we’re putting up. I’m not saying a bunch of songs are going to change everything. It’s just throwing out ideas that are expressed in music, and the music itself has a sense of existence and spirit because it’s literally got life in it.
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verbal gymnastics
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by verbal gymnastics »

This is great and the most personal interview I've read for a long time. Elvis is very open.

Thanks for posting this.
Who’s this kid with his mumbo jumbo?
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A rope leash
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by A rope leash »

Deep interview.

I woke up this morning with Wise Up Ghost haunting my head, and right now Walk Us Uptown is banging along.

Thanks for responding to my "review". I'm just trying to pass along impressions in a realistic fashion.

I've been thinking about what happens in my mind when I listen to this recording. Taking for example Tripwire...there's a little bundle of nerves in my brain that contains the song Satellite, just as there is a bundle of nerves for every song I've ever heard. There are new bundles in my head for the songs on Wise Up Ghost. I can tell because they are now playing.

The Satellite bundle is resisting being replaced by the new Tripwire bundle. The Satellite bundle is screaming where's the bridge and where's Chrissie Hynde?!

It's unsettling. I'm too old for this kind of stress. Everyone know that I have a really fragile mind...














:wink:
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Otis Westinghouse
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

I don't get the bundle replacement thing given that the only link between the two songs is a tiny intro portion from Satellite that you could blink (or its auditory equivalent) and miss. And they're both soulful, slow 6/8 songs.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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Natasha
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Natasha »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBcQMLFddJs

Review of the album in brazilian magazine Veja. It´s not much different from the reviews we´ve seen so far. The critic basicaly starts remembering that both EC and The Roots are known by their frequent colaborations and points out that neither Elvis nor The Roots tried to adapt to one another. In his opinion, although The Roots kinda gives the tone of the album it´s a good thing that Elvis didn´t try to rap or something like that. He thinks the album brings together the best of what both artists have to give: Questlove's funky drums and Elvis' talent for strong lyrics. Then he highlights a couple of tracks ("Walk Us Uptown contains more of The Root's hip hop than Elvis' sophisticated pop", "Wake me up sounds like Soul Music from the 70's", "Refuse To Be Saved is like a funky Bob Dylan")

"If it wasn´t for Costello's creative force The Roots would hardly make songs like the title track" he says and mentions that the strings remind you of Enio Morricone and the George Gershwin piano (but he doesn´t mention the fact that these elements come from previous EC works).

As you can see, the review is very positive. Coming from a snnobish critic like this one I am not sure that´s a good or bad thing, though. :P
“Between tenderness and brute force.”

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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 »

John wrote:There certainly sounds like there will be more releases.

http://ca.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-th ... 23258.html

Elvis Costello & the Roots: Questlove’s Pipe Dream Isn’t Over

(...)
If you're already hip to the album, which was released in mid-September, there's good news. More music from the pairing is on the way. Roots drummer and co-leader Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson tells us that there will be a new release by Costello & the Roots on the Black Friday version of Record Store Day, fitting since it was on the annual springtime celebration of independent record stores that first saw the release of Wake Up Ghost as a limited-run while label test pressing. "We got something really special coming for that day," he says. And that's not all, Questlove tells us that their live performance at the Brooklyn Bowl on Sept. 16, the eve of the album's official release, "really opened up a whole new good can of worms," hinting there may be even more to come.
(...)
Record Store Day Black Friday will be on November 29, 2013. It's a safe bet the new release will be the Remix album: http://www.elviscostellofans.com/phpBB3 ... f=2&t=9997
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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Jackson Monk
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Jackson Monk »

I've had the album on rotation since it arrived and I concur that the new tracks interest most. I love Tripwire but it has been waking my head up at 3am which is not helpful. Overall, I see it as an interesting addition to his catalogue which I may return to periodically. However, it does seem like light-years ago since I waited outside Golden Discs in Dublin for half an hour on a cold monday morning in 1980 waiting to buy my copy of Get Happy. I wore the grooves out on that album but I can't see me doing that with WUG (metaphorically speaking of course). I love National Ransom but the last time I played a new album to death was North. Probably most tellingly, I didn't buy WUG until a week after release. That was unheard of for me 10 years ago. :?
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Otis Westinghouse
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

But did you get the Deluxe version?

Hey, it's the return of Jackson Monk! Good to see you round here.
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The imposter
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by The imposter »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:I love the song title 'Cinco Minutos Con Vos' [5 Minutes With You] because of the use of the 'voseo' instead of the 'tú' form used for the 2nd person singular in Spain, which is absolutely the norm in 'Rioplatense' use in Argentina and also in other parts of Latin America, whereas in Spain it's archaic sounding. I once spent an evening with a couple in Buenos Aires talking Spanish, and by the end of the evening I was almost there using it (bear in mind the verb conjugation is different with the stress on the last syllable).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voseo

Good to see the first entrance of the voseo into the Costello cannon.
Did anyone else notice the thematic similarity between this song and Victor Jara's "Te Recuerdo Amanda" ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRmre8ggkcY

Continuing Elvis great tradition of writing "answer songs" in the tradition of "Either Side of The Same Town" (Dark End of The Street), "Heathen Town" (Sin City) and "What Lewis Did Last" (Ommie Wise). Both "Cinco Minutos Con Vos" and "Te Recuerdo Amanda" refer to missing loved ones in South America and the longing for those 5 minutes.

Te recuerdo Amanda

la calle mojada

corriendo a la fabrica donde trabajaba Manuel

La sonrisa ancha, la lluvia en el pelo,

no importaba nada

ibas a encontrarte con el,

con el, con el, con el, con el


Son cinco minutos

la vida es eterna,

en cinco minutos


Suena la sirena,

de vuelta al trabajo

y tu caminando lo iluminas todo

los cinco minutos

te hacen florecer


Te recuerdo Amanda

la calle mojada

corriendo a la fabrica

donde trabajaba Manuel


La sonrisa ancha

la lluvia en el pelo

no importaba nada,

ibas a encontrarte con el,

con el, con el, con el, con el


Que partió a la sierra

que nunca hizo daño,

que partió a la sierra

y en cinco minutos,

quedó destrozado


Suenan las sirenas

de vuelta al trabajo

muchos no volvieron

tampoco Manuel


Te recuerdo Amanda,

la calle mojada

corriendo a la fábrica,

donde trabajaba Manuel.

Excellent song which Robert Wyatt also covered.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by johnfoyle »

Elvis played that song on Irish radio in 1998. It was my introduction to Victor's wonderful work -

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... 1998-03-24
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Otis Westinghouse
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Fascinating - the 1998 link seems to confirm the 'response' suggestion.

Has Costello said anything in the interviews about this or this song's lyrics in any way?

There have been references to Las Malvinas, to Shipbuilding, etc., which the use of 'vos' would underline, but the song refers to Montevideo, so Uruguay not Argentina. La Marisoul is of Mexican roots. This also explains what, unless my ignorance misleads, is a curious grammatical inconsistency in the song in that she songs 'mas si te atreves', when I think the vos form would be 'si te atrevés', i.e. stress on last syllable [I think vos takes the tu form in reflexives, though].

God that's a gorgeous song. His voice and guitar. I used to listen to him in Madrid in the 80s but not since. Must go back and reexplore. Simple but very powerful.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by johnfoyle »

Elvis has referred to Victor Jara a few times , most recently in Mojo (Sept. '13)

http://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/inde ... ember_2013

Costello is more vague about his real-world inspirations. "I guess if you look out of the window you don't have to look very far." Margaret Thatcher's recent death may have sparked memories of his gift for writing protest songs both humane ("Shipbuilding") and homicidal ("Tramp The Dirt Down"), but he's always down-played their significance.

"It's the delusion of protest music: because you write it, it changes things. It doesn't. It only changes in the hearts of people who listen. And it's not brave. Victor Jara, that's brave. If they lock you up in a football stadium and chop your hands off, that's brave. Most of the time, the worst thing that can happen is they won't play your record or the record label drops you." He shrugs. "It's not the most dramatic: thing that can happen to you."
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