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

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And No Coffee Table
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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Neil. wrote:Steve "that was the take" Mandel!
Steven Mandel seems to think it's Questlove saying "that was the take."

http://twitter.com/StevenMandel/status/ ... 7225975808
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

cwr wrote:"Stick Out Your Tongue" I have actually come to prefer over the original "Pills & Soap." I just like it better.
Wow wow wow. I'm sometimes stunned by people's taste. Famously there's no accounting for it. I will posit, though, that as you're a youngster you weren't witness to the magic of P & S when first released and didn't fall in love with it as this fascinating new minimalist politically biting thing Costello has done with little precedent. By comparison, for this old timer, SOYT is like the flaccid corpse of a drunk in a ditch (Oh God, I think Moz's arch over-exaggerated put downs of almost everything is taking its toll on me!)

I'd be keen to reappraise WUG, but somehow I can't muster up the enthusiasm to listen to it. I guess I'm just a lover of Costello live these days. Last record I truly loved was ATUB.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by cwr »

Yes, I would've first heard P&S in 1994, and I've always *liked* it but it's never been one of my favorites. To me, the Roots' playing on SOYT just sounds better than Costello's original drum machine recording.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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cwr wrote:"Stick Out Your Tongue" I have actually come to prefer over the original "Pills & Soap." I just like it better.
I agree (heresy, right?) The live version in Brooklyn sealed the deal for me.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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Otis Westinghouse wrote:(Oh God, I think Moz's arch over-exaggerated put downs of almost everything is taking its toll on me!)
Have you read the autobiography yet? I started, but am finding it a somewhat painful read.
Otis Westinghouse wrote:I'd be keen to reappraise WUG, but somehow I can't muster up the enthusiasm to listen to it. I guess I'm just a lover of Costello live these days. .
The Brooklyn show would have changed your thinking of WUG, I think.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by bronxapostle »

doc...forget BROOKLYN! that's old news 2 months gone. i just sent you two mp3 from KINGSTON! share at that thread if you got the time please with these good people. LITTLE ATOMS and an unbelievably SUPER recording of the soundchecked HOW DEEP IS THE RED? despite it being recorded behind brick and what i can only imagine were fireproof metal doors....SONY SLAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by the_platypus »

This record is a triumph.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by SoulForHire »

docinwestchester wrote:
cwr wrote:"Stick Out Your Tongue" I have actually come to prefer over the original "Pills & Soap." I just like it better.
I agree (heresy, right?) The live version in Brooklyn sealed the deal for me.
Count me in with the rest of the heretics.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by bronxapostle »

the_platypus wrote:This record is a triumph.
nearly EVERYTIME! we are lucky.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

docinwestchester wrote: Have you read the autobiography yet? I started, but am finding it a somewhat painful read.
In terms of the writing, the content? I think it's very powerful. I'm now around the time of the first Smiths album. His formative years were excellent. It's frustrating how much detail he gives to certain things in his youth, and then he romps through meeting Marr, touring and recording with Troy Tate and then John Porter in just a few pages, spending far longer slagging off Rough Trade's Geoff Traffis than telling you what you want to know about those other things. I've commented in more detail on the Morrissey thread, e.g. on some of the wonderful writing. He is brilliant on music and poetry. At times the writing needs a good edit, and it's bizarre to me why a Manc author in Penguin Classics spells American style, WTF? It is of course very idiosyncratic, and I suspect some of the curmudgeonly stuff, e.g. with Traffis, is going to leave a nasty taste in the mouth, but it's a fascinating and compelling book. Totally recommended to anyone with any degree of Smiths/Moz fandom.
docinwestchester wrote: The Brooklyn show would have changed your thinking of WUG, I think.
If I'd been there? I have the recording, which is fine. I'm sure it would have been great. Wouldn't have changed my view of the album, which is c. 6 great songs (and in the same way that I don't get the love for SOYT - even if you prefer the arrangement, how can anyone defend the pointless and annoying 'Stick out your tongue' line, godawful - nor do I remotely get how anyone can be dismissive off Tripwire, one of EC's best examples of tunesmithery and lyrical affectingness in ages, and what a vocal performance) and a lot of generally pointless fillerish reworking of past moments.

I do like the Roots and their vibe and Walk Us Uptown, Tripwire, Cinco Minutos, Come The Meantimes, Viceroy's Row and Wise Up Ghost show what a great album this could have been.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by sulky lad »

Otis W says -
[quote]I do like the Roots and their vibe and Walk Us Uptown, Tripwire, Cinco Minutos, Come The Meantimes, Viceroy's Row and Wise Up Ghost show what a great album this could have been.[/quote
After a considerable period of listening to this album, I'm afraid I'm with Otis completely with this. SOYT and Refuse To Be Saved and Wake Me Up detract from the good songs (I'm not even prepared to concede that there is a great song on this album yet though I could be persuaded by Tripwire). What I don't get is the reason to fudge the lyrics of past songs - when you're talking about one of the three greatest living lyricists alive today. Was the playing of the Roots so complex that new lyrics wouldn't flow because I really don't believe Elvis has been struggling with words since the sad passing of Ross !
The playing of The Roots is great and I love the stolen intro of Cinqo Minutos from the Bethlehem PA 1979 live version of High Fidelity and the recording from Brooklyn Bowl is great (thanks very much again Doc) but the best moments from that seem to be either covers or originals for me too !
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by cwr »

I don't think the "Stick Out Your Tongue" line is "pointless." The merging of lyrics from songs in 1983, 1991 and 2009-- three songs that offer his bleakest assessment of the state of things at those times-- creates a different effect than if he'd just done, say, a straight re-working of "Pills And Soap."

Whereas the original version of "P&S" is purely menacing, I think there is a touch of ridiculousness to "SOYT" that makes it a totally different song and gives it a reason for existing. The sense of "things haven't changed, three decades later" is aided by the blending in of lines from "Hurry Down Doomsday" and "National Ransom" as checkpoints, and having the chorus be "STICK out your TONGUE/DRINK down the VENOM" is Costello showing where we are now. It's like something out of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," to my mind.

Fair enough if you find it "annoying"-- there's no cure for that, that's just a completely legitimate reaction-- but I don't think the merging of the songs is "pointless." I think it was most likely a carefully considered decision, not some random fuck-around-- ("Hey, let's throw some lyrics from these other two songs in here, who gives a fuck!" "YEAH, Let's DO it!!!")
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by taramasalata »

the_platypus wrote:This record is a triumph.
Fully agree with you, the_playtypus

What' most annoying to me about WUG is that lukewarm complaining about this fabulous record on this board. I don't get it, EC is once again heading for new land and delivering such wonderful gems as Walk us uptown, Sugar won't work, Tripwire and the complete second half of the album plus the bonus with the fascinating The puppet has cut his strings, along with great reworks like Wake me up, all done with wonderful drumming and dreamlike strings that swirl in between the sounds like a wind that connects all the different facets and all he gets from some of you on this board is moaning and knowing it better.
Better listen to your MOR Springsteen records, I recommend.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

taramasalata wrote:
the_platypus wrote:This record is a triumph.
Fully agree with you, the_playtypus

What' most annoying to me about WUG is that lukewarm complaining about this fabulous record on this board. I don't get it, EC is once again heading for new land and delivering such wonderful gems as Walk us uptown, Sugar won't work, Tripwire and the complete second half of the album plus the bonus with the fascinating The puppet has cut his strings, along with great reworks like Wake me up, all done with wonderful drumming and dreamlike strings that swirl in between the sounds like a wind that connects all the different facets and all he gets from some of you on this board is moaning and knowing it better.
Better listen to your MOR Springsteen records, I recommend.
Except for the regrettable hostility of the last line, I agree with this. It's as though boredom at the failed "Stick Out Your Tongue" and "Grenade" and some sort of refusal to embrace the other, hugely successful reworkings - apparently based on some philosophy that you have to measure new lyrics by the pound in order to determine whether an album is any good - overawe all the terrific material on the album, including new songs, almost all of which are no-brainer vintage EC. I don't see why a couple of duff tracks overwhelm all the other treasures on this outstanding album. It's a response that suggests, to me, a prior skepticism about the whole enterprise...sort of a musical confirmation bias.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Otis Westinghouse »

Not from me, old chum, I was dying to love this record and when the first songs were aired and a journalist pronounced it a future classic, I was salivating. I also enjoyed hearing Brooklyn Bowl a lot ahead of the album.

My objection to the insertion of those lines from Nat Ran into SOYT is not so much based on whether it creates an interesting new mash-up or works conceptually (you can make claims for both, although it's an incredibly self-referential game) but much more on how it plays as a song. For me the great Pills and Soap loses it's bite and venom in this dullsville arrangement, and then once the leaden 'Stick out your tongue' line arrives, well I'd be hitting skip if I was listening to this song at all.

I don't see why I have to embrace the entire album. I just wish he'd made something that really felt 4 or even 5 star, not, as Wardo has it and I am nodding, three star.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/musique/ ... 99566.html


Elvis Costello et Questlove: rencontre avec un duo rap'n'roll

Par Paola Genone (L'Express), publié le 16/11/2013 à 17:22

Le chanteur et guitariste britannique retrouve sa verve au côté de Questlove, leader du groupe américain de hip-hop The Roots. A l'occasion de la sortie de l'album Wise up Ghost, L'Express les a rencontrés à New York.


En les voyant monter sur scène à New York, en octobre dernier, on a du mal à y croire. A priori, ces deux-là n'étaient pas faits pour se rencontrer.

L'un, Declan MacManus, alias Elvis Costello, 59 ans, a déboulé sur le tapis new wave et punk-rock britannique à la fin des années 1970, avec ses cordes de guitare révoltées et ses ballades déchirantes.



L'autre, Ahmir Thompson, alias Questlove, 42 ans, rappeur, batteur et leader du groupe américain The Roots, formé en 1987, est l'emblème d'un hip-hop aussi intello que dansant.

Ce soir-là, 800 personnes ondulent aux rythmes funk, rock et reggae de cette formation inédite et explosive : accompagné des Roots, Costello chante avec une énergie et une classe dont on avait la nostalgie.

Dans le public, un drôle de mélange de clones de Mr. Costello - lunettes et feutre rétro sur la tête -, la chanteuse de jazz Diana Krall, son épouse, et de jeunes breakers cachés sous leurs capuches. Tous réunis pour écouter Wise Up Ghost, signé Elvis Costello & The Roots...

"Elvis a toujours été notre héros", lance Questlove, géant à la crinière afro. Avec son groupe, le musicien est la star du Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, émission de télé culte dans laquelle il jamme régulièrement avec Prince ou Bruce Springsteen. "Nous avons invité Elvis sur le plateau plusieurs fois... C'était un prétexte pour lui proposer d'enregistrer avec nous." Il ne se doutait pas que l'ex-leader des Imposters nourrissait le même rêve.
Un chaudron plein de poudres et de potions

"Questlove et moi sommes liés par un destin commun, explique Costello. Mon père était chanteur et trompettiste. Celui de "Quest", Lee Andrews, était le leader du groupe de doo-wop le plus connu des années 1950. Nous avons grandi au milieu de milliers de vinyles et lui comme moi refusons les étiquettes musicales." A l'image de leur album : un chaudron de sorcière, plein de poudres, de potions et de grenouilles.

Elvis Costello, critique musical féroce à ses heures perdues, n'est pas tombé dans le piège du rockeur en fin de course qui tente de surprendre ses fans : il ne rappe pas et son chant est toujours aussi dissonant et romantique. Questlove, considéré comme une encyclopédie vivante du hip-hop, explore, lui, le rock de la deuxième invasion britannique. "Le rap est une collision entre le rock, Bo Didd -ley, la soul et d'autres formes d'expressions incontrôlables, comme le jazz...", s'exclamet-il.

Pourtant, Questlove admet avoir rencontré "certaines difficultés à jouer sur une berceuse aussi douce que Tripwire", magnifique ballade de l'album. Costello ricane... Derrière la délicatesse de certaines de ses mélodies se glissent des textes sombres, allusions à une époque basée sur l'avidité et la tromperie : "J'aimerais que nous ayons quelque chose de mieux à attendre de l'avenir."

Avec les Roots, Elvis Costello tente de réhabiliter l'idée selon laquelle la musique peut être un parfait équilibre entre l'expression du corps et le travail des méninges.



Google translation -


Elvis Costello and Questlove : Meeting with Rap'N'Roll duo


Genone by Paola (The Express) , published on 16/11/2013 at 17:22

The British singer and guitarist found his verve alongside Questlove , the leader of American hip- hop group The Roots . On the occasion of the release of the album Wise up Ghost , The Express met them in New York.


Seeing them on stage in New York last October, it's hard to believe. A priori, these two were not meant to meet.

One Declan MacManus , aka Elvis Costello, 59, tumbled down on the carpet and new wave British punk rock in the late 1970s with his guitar strings revolted and heartbreaking ballads.

The other , Ahmir Thompson , aka Questlove , 42, rapper , drummer and leader of the American band The Roots, formed in 1987 , is a hip- hop nerd that emblem as dancing .

That evening , 800 people wave to funk rhythms , rock and reggae this new and explosive training : accompanied Roots Costello sings with an energy and a class which had nostalgia.

In the audience, a strange mixture of clones of Mr. Costello - retro glasses and felt on the head - the jazz singer Diana Krall, his wife and young hidden beneath their hoods breakers . All gathered to hear Wise Up Ghost signed Elvis Costello & The Roots ...

"Elvis has always been our hero," Questlove launches , giant Afro mane. With his band , the musician is the star of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, cult TV show in which he jamme regularly with Prince and Bruce Springsteen . " We invited Elvis on the set several times ... It was an excuse to propose to register with us. " He had no idea that the former leader of Imposters fed the same dream.
A cauldron full of powders and potions

" Questlove and I are bound by a common destiny , says Costello . My father was a singer and trumpet . One of " Quest " , Lee Andrews, was the leader of the doo- wop group best known 1950s. We have grown among thousands of LPs and I refuse him as the music labels. " Like their album: a witch's cauldron full of powders, potions and frogs.

Elvis Costello , fierce in his spare time music critic , has not fallen into the trap of rocker end of the race trying to surprise his fans: he did not stroke and his singing is still dissonant and romantic. Questlove , considered a living encyclopedia of hip- hop, exploring him, the rock of the second British invasion. " Rap is a collision between rock , Bo Diddy - ley , soul and other forms of uncontrollable expressions, like jazz ...", it is exclamet .

Yet Questlove admits having met " some difficulties to play a lullaby soft as Tripwire " beautiful ballad of the album . Costello sneers ... Behind the delicacy of some of his songs slip dark texts, references at a time based on greed and deception : "I wish we had something better to wait for the future. "


With Roots , Elvis Costello tries to rehabilitate the idea that music can be a perfect balance between the expression of the body and brain work .
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Poor Deportee »

Otis Westinghouse wrote:Not from me, old chum, I was dying to love this record and when the first songs were aired and a journalist pronounced it a future classic, I was salivating. I also enjoyed hearing Brooklyn Bowl a lot ahead of the album.

My objection to the insertion of those lines from Nat Ran into SOYT is not so much based on whether it creates an interesting new mash-up or works conceptually (you can make claims for both, although it's an incredibly self-referential game) but much more on how it plays as a song. For me the great Pills and Soap loses it's bite and venom in this dullsville arrangement, and then once the leaden 'Stick out your tongue' line arrives, well I'd be hitting skip if I was listening to this song at all.

I don't see why I have to embrace the entire album. I just wish he'd made something that really felt 4 or even 5 star, not, as Wardo has it and I am nodding, three star.
Well, yeah - I agree that "Stick Out Your Tongue" is a bore. What I don't understand is why that song sabotages the entire album. That's what I'm saying; the two failed mash-ups seem to overwhelm the rest of the record for many of the folks hereabouts, and I find that odd. I must have missed the memo that says that EC is not permitted a couple of mediocre tracks on an otherwise excellent album.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by stricttime81 »

I seem to be alone in really enjoying the pure, bare-bones funk of "Grenade". I do agree that the lesser of the re-works is SOYT, only because the original is such a classic.

Overall though, WUG is unbelievable, gets better and better with each listening (and there have been many).
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

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Wise Up Ghost: A Conversation with Elvis Costello
Posted: 11/25/2013 12:00 am

Mike Ragogna: Hello Elvis, how are you?

Elvis Costello: I'm doing well, thank you very, very much.

MR: You took a different approach with Wise Up Ghost than most others have with their albums. What was the mission?

EC: It's the result of our informal collaborations or collaborations with a different agenda. The Roots role as the house band on the Fallon show, I saw it as the toolbox for something more enduring than a television appearance. You try to make the television appearance the best it can be, but what I loved about my first encounter with The Roots was I watched them work with other people, but I didn't know what the protocols were or how many people on the show were already friends of theirs. I ended up calling my wife's drummer who's a pal of ?uest's, asking, "Do you think they'd play with me?" to get into the studio and lock the door until I made a record with them. So I suppose we were both looking at it the same in slightly different perspectives. If we had the opportunity to play together, it seemed like there would be a lot of possibilities. The way they approached playing the songs, whether they were old or new, and each time I went to the show, it was a different agenda.

MR: One reason why I said this was a different approach is because you revisit some of your older material with an upgrade of arrangement, sound and intention.

EC: That applies to only a handful of songs on the record. It was one of the starting points for the collaboration. We didn't really know we were making a record, we were just making some tracks. Initially, we thought we might be making an EP or even just one song. We didn't really have a plan for anybody, we didn't tell anybody, including ourselves what we were doing. We certainly didn't tell a record company. No record company was involved until the record was practically made. I think that took a lot of the pressure off. With the different working methods--Steven Mandel deserves a lot of credit for standing in the middle ground between ?uest and myself--we had no theoretical conversations about the music, we just started to play. One of the initial ideas was to revisit some of my songs in a quite literal form and simply rearrange them. I felt it was my decision to go further with that and dismantle the songs and reassemble them into new maps that led the way, then, to taking the foundation of some rehearsal jams, using those sequences of music in the same way that you might use a sequence of chords on the acoustic guitar. There's very little difference. By taking a clip of the band playing live in a rehearsal studio and using that interesting little sequence of music as your musical foundation for a whole new musical adventure is just a question of recognizing the value of something you've played, some little quirk of the way the band turns around in the rhythm or the way it's looped, you know? This isn't opening your mind up to unconventional methods of recording, it's not that we're doing something unprecedented, I just haven't used these methods in such an overt way before. They're not even the first time I've used these methods before. "Green Shirt" on Armed Forces, there's a sequenced Mimi-Moog running right through that track. Obviously, if we had played everything as an expression of that rhythm. it would have been a very different record from the one that we made. It had a sea-like element, which, at the time, was our reference to Kraftwerk. It seems funny to say it now, but we had heard Kraftwerk and that's what we took out of Kraftwerk, that little Mini-Moog kind of juttering away in the background of that record.

Other records, you want the breath of what people call--it's a really weird word--"Organic" the wooden instruments, back in the mid-eighties in the making of King Of America. It was very attractive to me to hear the sound of the brushes on the snares and the double bass. These were people that placed the groove in a different place than I'd been used to. We had all these records with the combo band and we were a very tight and cohesive band. We could play quite a lot better than many of our contemporaries, and it wasn't about philosophy, it was about intensity. Then you realize there's another story where you need to let the music breathe and the musicians need to stand back from the song and not be in the foreground all the time. Every combination of instruments and instrumentalists that you might get the opportunity to play with offers you different virtues and different pitfalls, as well, if you allow different things to dominate. If you ask ?uest about it, he was very conscious that we were not making something that would be perceived as my "hip-hop" record, whatever the hell that would mean. I wouldn't have any problem with that. It's just a word. But it was something where we were trying to do something effective. That's what he was concerned about. I've always had songs in my repertoire that people call "political"; they're the sort of reporting of something as you see it, your particular view in the ways of the world or things that we're all sharing. Sometimes, a melody serves that very well, other times, not. It's more important than the rhythm of the words take. Once you say that the distance between what the most inventive people in hip-hop do and what the lineage that leads to Bob Dylan doing "It's All Right, Ma"... I don't know what you call it, but if the song expresses what the singer's intending, right back to songs in the twenties right up to the latest band, they're just words attached to something which is elusive, a work of imagination.

MR: As much as this might have been an experiment, this album also does seem more pointed or focused than that, at least to this listener.

EC: We just wanted to make a record as good as it could sound. Obviously, I'm not going to subscribe to the lazy praise of this record to the extent of other things. I know that the other records have different methodology and different intentions and if they try the patience or are beyond the comprehension of some people, that's fine. I don't see it as a competition of one approach or another, I think the approach that you take on one record is valid for that material and obviously if you kept repeating that performance, you'll end up with a very dull result. A lot's made of my intent when I'm collaborating. All music is collaborative. All music's collaborative because you're playing with other people. It's only notable when it's the result of an extreme contrast, like if I worked with Burt Bacharach, then people were really curious. People were like, "Well, how does that work," because they see it as two totally different worlds. Believe me, I've recently been writing with him again, and when we're in a room together within the fabric of a song, within the actual workings of a song, it doesn't feel at all like we're from different worlds. Obviously we have different experiences and different strengths and it's so wonderful to actually be watching him move a note up a semitone or stretch a phrase by a couple of beats to achieve an effect. That's no different than what we're doing in Wise Up Ghost. I would come in and Steven would drop a beat down and we'd create this little hole or a delay. If you take the title track "Wise Up Ghost," it was recorded against a sample of string orchestration I had recorded for the record North, but everything that The Roots contributed to the record was scored like a movie score. So there's no one way, as they say, to skin a cat. There's no one methodology, which is superior to the others, it's what's needed to tell the story in that moment.

MR: Do you think you came out of this collaboration changed in any way?

EC: I tend to think that the lessons that you learn from each experience tend to reveal themselves later. It's not like school where you get the diploma at the end of the term. You tend to notice that a new song, a couple of years down the road, will be a new shape that you never considered. I know when I worked for a couple of years with The Boston Quartet, we wrote this piece together without any reference to drums or any of the beats that most of my records had had. Although I'd worked with a lot of musicians, it was the first time I hadn't had even the insistent rhythm of an acoustic guitar keeping the thing moving forward. It was just different, you know? Then when I went to write my next record, there were a few songs on that album that I never would've written without that other experience, just the shape of the songs, musically, never would've occurred to me. But I didn't have a self-consciousness about having learned anything, that was just suddenly at my disposal. I don't really sit there and analyze what I'm getting out of it. But you asked me that question with regards to Wise Up Ghost; I have no self-consciousness about what I've learned or gained, I just wrote the record and I think it's effective, I think it tells the story. Somewhere along the way, it became apparent that it was predominantly a bulletin record and there were one or two moments with more personal reflection. They seem less appropriate when you're in a cooperative endeavor like this, to be speaking of the deeply personal, but in the end, I felt like the confidence to that was being created. I think it illustrated a degree of development of the collaboration over the six months that we worked on this. We started in about August of last year. We were putting strings on it when we were about to master and brought Brent Fischer in to do the orchestration; I thought that was a very inspired choice. I would've delivered the record without those elements, now I couldn't imagine the record without it. He had a very good vision about that and that's why we all work well as a team, we all have things to bring in.

MR: Elvis, what advice do you have for new artists?

EC: I wouldn't really presume to tell them anything. I think that their experience has got to be very different from the one that I had. I look at my beginnings. I ended up having myself come from just working out of one shop front, and it seemed that we knew everybody who was working there, from the designer to the people that put up the posters around town. It was really a cottage industry, and I think the company seems much more a face in which you could hide. But compare them to the modern corporations, impersonal multi-product corporations that doesn't have music as its main purpose, it can be intimidating for young musicians. I think that's why you see so many people taking the direct route to the public. I have no smart advice, but don't give up anything for a short-term gain. People give up the rights to the tour and the t-shirts for the privilege of recording and it's no different than becoming a prostitute. People have bought the copyrights to songs for sixty dollars and then the people who had nothing to do with writing the songs put their names on the song credit. That went on from the forties to the fifties and then it died out a little, but you see a similar kind of impulse because it's so difficult for people to make the volume of profit that they saw their predecessors make. It's changed, and there's nothing that's going to change it back. If you really believe in what you're doing, you have to really remain resolute about it and think of the way to get to people. Think of a show that nobody else can copy. If anything, it encourages originality and that's what I see in the best of it. That's an argument for the young artist, not for the music player. I have no smart solution. I don't think anybody does. The worst mistake made was to let the industry standards drop, that was the crucial mistake. I think sonically, it will be judged that way. From 78s to 45s to long play, radio over records, film over radio, television over film, they've all offered different possibilities for music and musical comedy and it was covered really well with that, but it was inevitable that it would eventually have a new easily transmittable form of music--digital. And at the same time as it opened it up, you literally couldn't basically protect the copyright anymore. I think that was the mistake. I think a lot of people will accept the fact that it was a mistake, and whatever benefits it brought... Those who actually make the content of the Apples and the Spotifys and subscriptions... Obviously, the deal's done with the copyright holders who are the record companies and sometimes, they're not paying the artists and sometimes, they need an income just to keep the band going. Think about being a young artist trying to start on that foundation. How are they supposed to do that? That's why so many people make music and stick it on Youtube or Facebook. It's the only way they can try to have a music career.

MR: So true. Elvis, thank you so much for your time. All the best with the new record.

EC: Thank you.

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne
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And No Coffee Table
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Re: New album for 2013: collaboration with The Roots!

Post by And No Coffee Table »

And No Coffee Table wrote:Co-producer Steven Mandel continues to tease us on Twitter.
Steven Mandel wrote:Need red shoes and a green shirt for next year's Grammy's. @ElvisCostello @theroots
The Grammy nominations have been announced. Wise Up Ghost has been nominated for... nothing.
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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 »

One of the few releases of the year that isn't in there somewhere! how many days does the ceremony last for?

What exactly is the distinction between Best Record of the Year and Best Song of the Year? Two songs are in common. Very odd.

Nice to see my fave album of the year (The National) in there.
There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more
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pophead2k
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by pophead2k »

I believe best song is a songwriter's award whereas best record also takes into account the recording, production, and performance.
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krm
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by krm »

La Santa Cecilia is nominated in Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album for Treinta Diaz. EC is a part of that with his vocal on "Losing game" at least.
cwr
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by cwr »

UGH.

Stupid that this couldn't nab a Grammy nomination. I'm annoyed by this.
Neil.
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Re: New album for 2013: "Wise Up Ghost" (with The Roots!)

Post by Neil. »

Does seem a shame! Nomatter. The album remains good, whether or not it's nominated for anything.

I notice it didn't make the NME top 50 albums of the year list, either. Bah! Maybe some of the muso magazines will take up the slack?
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