Those who attended the concert Elvis Costello and Steve Snow offered at the Tívoli in 1999, you may remember it as one of the best offered by the author of ‘Alison’ in Barcelona. And those who were not there, and dropped by the Palau this Tuesday, were also in luck: an encyclopedic exhibition of ‘less is more’, detailed and full of surprises and blows of the steering wheelthe one provided for us by this reckless common-law couple, a tandem in dance for 46 years.
A score of scores passed through the lectern that told us about the vast melting pot of records practiced by Costello: the echo of the impetuous ‘new wave’, the troubled ‘crooner’ (with some initial trouble to temper the throat) or the big boy fiddling with electronics. The pedalboard guitar was his friend on the opening piece, ‘When I was cruel no. 2’, title track from the 2002 album about the bonhomie that maybe (perhaps) we adopted in life over the years, with its direct quote (and musical graft) to ‘Dancing queen’, by Abba. Next to him, a Snow ready to alternate a small keyboard and the grand piano.
own standards
The vocalist Costello grows in concerts like this, sometimes doing without the guitar and allowing himself to be wrapped only by the piano arpeggios, with echoes of Gershwin in ‘Shot with his own gun’ and ‘Accidents will happen’ with overtones of an eternal standard. Lots of material from his early era (1977-82), including a heartfelt ‘Alison’, and some appreciable recent wedges, from the album ‘The boy named If‘ (2022), and a still unpublished number, ‘Like licorice on your tongue’, rhythm’n’blues at full guitar.
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But when Costello and Nieve are let loose, the repertoire looks like a lottery hype with only jackpots coming out, sensitively revived. That ‘Toledo’ hatched with Burt Bacharach, a memory of ‘The birds will still be singing‘ (from his alliance with the Brodsky Quartet, staged 30 years ago in the same Palau), that ‘She’ borrowed from Aznavour and that seems to be his. Costello, like a canonical vocalist, getting intimate with the vintage radio studio microphone in ‘The long honeymoon’ and in the cool-jazz of ‘Almost blue’, or riding on reggae ‘noir’with electronic interference, from ‘Watching the detectives’.
And the ‘Shipbuilding’ warships, Falklands road (quoting Robert Wyatt: “the best version& rdquor;), pointing to a long fade, stretching the ‘setlist’ via Nick Lowe with ‘(What’s so funny ’bout) peace, love and understanding)’, dropping another unpublished cut (title unknown) and choosing a heavyweight to say goodbye: ‘I want you’, a serious ballad, a reflection of an obsessive relationship, to make it clear that Costello (and Naive) is serious.