Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE
ELVIS COSTELLO WITH BURT BACHARACH
Painted From Memory
(Mercury)
On the face of it, there's a distance between them that's akin to the gap between Sir Cliff and Marilyn Manson.
Here's Elvis, the onetime New Wave supergeek turned singer-songwriter's singer-songwriter, and Burt - the ageing king of American non-rock sophisto-pop.
But Costello has used many - too many - of his recent albums to show just how cultivated he can be.
Meantime composer-arranger Bacharach, who turned peddler of saccharin MOR in the 1980s, more recently became a name to drop as an influence among many artists for his classic 60s tunes. Yes, the passage of pop history has brought Burt and the Beatles together in one breath. And he was hip enough to get a cameo in Austin Powers.
It was another movie that first got the pair together, penning God Give Me Strength for the film Grace of My Heart, a story about a Carole King-like figure. The movie was half-baked; the song, however, was glorious,
even if it was ostensibly an exercise in recapturing a pop era and its period detail.
So too is Painted From Memory upon which God Give Me Strength is included as a dramatic finale.
Initially, it'd be easy just to smile at the album's respective trademarks - Bacharach's chilled syncopation and plush symphonic upholstery; Costello's tremulous balladeer's voice and wordplay. It comes on toe-tappingly tasteful.
Then, however, the songs really kick in. Soon the 12 tracks are treading the line between heart-warming and heart-wrenching with piano-led string-laden ballads, elegantly wistful pop, and jauntier jazzier numbers.
It's in the ballads like I Still Have That Other Girl or What's her Name (both which should find a place alongside Costello's Alison) that Costello's performances really shine. Two words: channelling Frank.
It helps too that Costello has clipped his usual word count and upped the paint-a-picture to his lyrics. Though it's a picture of one unlucky guy.
Elsewhere the Bacharach factor shines brightly on Toledo with its muted horns and Latin bounce. Or when This House Is Empty Now comes out sounding like it could have once belonged to Dusty Springfield.
Elsewhere, the likes of the jazz-soul Such Unlikely Lovers or The Long Division suggest Steely Dan in their electric piano-framed frostiness.
And only the late arriving Sweetest Punch could have fitted on any other Costello album.
Here, despite the sophistication, Costello is more affecting than he's been in a very long time on an album of high dramatics, musical fireworks, sweet singing and bitter sentiments. Golly, it's lounge music's very own OK Computer. And it's sublime.
*****
EELS
Electro-Shock Blues
(Dream Works)
The sophomore effort from the Los Angeles trio who made their coolly quirky mark on the post-Beck pop landscape with impressive debut Beautiful Freak, shows a different spin on the difficult second album syndrome.
Their difficulty - well, that of mainman Mark "E" Everett - is that of having been confronted with a whole lot of mortality. No wonder his songs here have a body count of real people. But it's what he does with the material that makes this a quietly dazzling collection.
Oddly catchy, curiously poignant songs of grim humour, emotional bruising, suicide, cancer and being left to mourn.
It's a necessarily intimate affair, though the Eel's distinctive keyboard-led chamber rock does break out the bigger beats and guitars on Last Stop: This Town and the unforgettable Hospital Food (coming on like Beck backed by Morphine during visiting hours).
It goes all plaintively folky towards the end, and by the time it hits the relatively upbeat final track, P.S. You Rock My World, you feel you've been somewhere you didn't think existed on pop records. An album so dangerous some fool will probably try to ban it.
****
ABLE TASMANS
Songs from the Departure Lounge
(Flying Nun)
Auckland's Able Tasmans called it quits a year or two back after more than a decade as a Flying Nun fixture which produced four albums, a couple of EPs and some very good nights at venues long gone.
Their career wasn't particularly memorable. However, as this posthumous compilation reminds, their best songs certainly were.
The Ables relied on a warm sprawl of style - lyrical piano passages and sprightly organs, folk-rock strumming, the occasional country twang and layered vocal melodies.
Arguably, there wasn't a more strenuously musical outfit about, certainly not one who could get away with songs named Grey Lynn and Michael Fay, which worked neatly tangential ideas from their titles.
The best individual stuff is here. Like Hold Me 1 with its snowballing ivory introduction; School is No Good For You with its multiple movements and gorgeous climax; or the bent choral pop of Shape of Dolls (a different version from the one which previously appeared on an EP).
There's a cohesiveness to the roughly chronological 21 tracks that makes this a worthwhile collection, as does founder member Graeme Humphreys' amusing liner notes. They might not have achieved much commercial success but this album shows they made an achievement of their own eclectic approach.
****
BUFFALO TOM
Smitten
(Beggar's Banquet)
This Boston trio has long eluded mainstream attention despite their penchant for hearty, chest-beating rock spiced with a country-twang warmth.
Smitten certainly sounds like a more considered effort than their previous mid-90s offerings - or for that matter guitarist-vocalist Bill Janowitz's 1996 solo album Lonesome Billy.
Here it's variously delivering head-thrown-back powerchords under grand tunes (Postcard, The Bible), going robustly powerpop (White Paint Morning, Ice To Me) and sensitively acoustic (with shades of Simon and Garfunkel on Wiser).
It gets misty-eyed about some wee lassie (Scottish Windows) and tries something a little sonically experimental (on the drum-looped Knot In It).
It is somewhat predictable but still enjoyable for its energy, honesty and bravado. Best of all, Smitten makes it sound like Matchbox 20 never happened.
***
PICTURED: Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello
- Weekend TimeOut, 24/10/98
Rock - Always something here to remind us
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