I can’t talk today; my voice is completely destroyed. And it’s all Elvis’s fault.
It’s been 30 years since Elvis Costello fired the first salvos in his sonic assault on middle-class sensibility, but if anything, these days he’s firing harder and faster than ever. Age apparently cannot wither him, nor custom stale the infinite variety of hard-hitting rockers he can crank out. Playing at New York City's Nokia Theatre Wednesday night with his working band, the Imposters, Elvis simply tore the joint apart. He’s a goddamn inspiration to all of us who have no intention of aging gracefully.
They performed for nigh onto two hours with absolutely no patter, except for a brief band intro late in the show. Well, there was one other line, rattled off to introduce the evening’s only new song, “American Gangster Time.” (“Here’s a song about a mercenary bastard. One, two, three…”) Lengthy song intros would just be a waste of time; these guys Had Songs To Perform.
They packed 31 of them into the evening, drawn from across the span of Costello’s career. No one in the sold-out house needed intros anyway, not for numbers like “The Beat” and “Secondary Modern” and “Radio Radio.” And get this: the early ones, from My Aim Is True and This Year’s Model and Get Happy!, were often sped up from those original fast and furious tracks — no mean feat when you’re dealing with songs as wordy and witty as Costello’s. (Singing along – which I consider my duty as a concert-goer – was quite a challenge.) The sold-out house was packed with people who knew every lyric of “No Action” and “Lipstick Vogue”; no matter how fast they took it, we would have noticed if he missed a single snarky word. He didn’t.
There were no horn sections, no string quartets, no back-up singers. There were no videos (save for the Nokia’s standard drop-down screens to grant close-ups to the back rows). No special effects, no props, no costume changes. The Nokia is a wonderfully functional modern box of a theater with zero ambiance, but then, all the ambiance we needed came from that bare stage with the black-curtained backdrop.
Article comments
1 - Lisa McKay
I was at the Boston show the night before, and you've captured it all perfectly, Holly -- great review!
Sounds like there was a bit of overlap in the set lists -- and the acoustic version of "Alison" was a real standout, but it was definitely the only quiet moment of the night.
2 - Holly Hughes
I guess it's no surprise they wouldn't vary the set list much -- you can't just make this level of stuff up on the spur of the moment. (Well, maybe Nieve can.) Not a lot of improvisational jamming going on; it was clear that every number had been thought through, and if that entailed changing the original arrangement, so be it. But they had it nailed down tight.
I loved how on "Watching the Detectives", EC messed with the timing on the line, "He can't be wounded cause he's got no heart" -- he waited FOREVER to sing "heart", and then laid on spooky feedback when he finally released it. Remember that? Our crowd went crazy every time.
3 - JayRay
so when bro told me he was comin' thru NYC I was ready for just this show...and stood front stage right for the tightest rock show I have seen in a long while...there was a message tho' that he dropped throughout, and that was John Lennon Lives On, in both "Bulldog" and "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier"...and the anti-war message read clearly that EC still ROCKS...