THE BACKGROUND:
At the helm of a career soon charted to sail into its 30th year, insulated by nearly as many albums and motorized by near unanimous critical acclaim, it would be easy to see how 2005’s most notable natural and manmade disasters alike could piss off Elvis Costello.
DATELINE:
London- Early July 2005: the primary transportation lines of this peripheral pioneer’s birthplace are bombed at rush-hour by a terrorist cell, killing dozens and injuring hundreds more. The effect on his album sales, at best, is negligible.
DATELINE:
New Orleans- Less than two months later; late August 2005: the coastal birthplace of America’s distinctive jazz, blues and R&B movements is overwhelmed by flooding- and now, even a year later, the world has barely shut up about it, the economy has barely recovered from it, and Dr. John, Buckwheat Zydeco and Allen Toussaint are still being paraded around in pre-wave Mardis Gras proportions, their popularity resurging and their albums receiving the hype and back-logged sales boosts previously reserved alone for victim of Super-Bowl wardrobe malfunctions and subjects of Hollywood biopics.
DATELINE:
The Mississippi River- After-Katrina; Before The River in Reverse is recorded:
It would be easy to picture how Costello’s brow might furrow over those patented nerd specs as they magnify last year’s SoundScan figures. It would be easier to imagine the hollowing of his already gaunt cheeks as he asks himself, aloud, the who’s, how’s and why’s of post-disaster property value anomalies. It would be easiest to see him sailing the southern Mississippi River aboard a metaphorical ship, looking for a justification for the contrast between his flawless navigation through an ocean of staggeringly constant relevance and his perpetual failures in docking profitably on the mainland’s mainstream ports, and finding instead a different answer in Toussaint- a soul visionary for his contributions to other artists, a Delta icon for his ever-adapting ear for classy rhythm and timing, a forgotten innovator of wholly-American melody and imagination turned a re-discovered cash cow by way of the triangular merge of a severe tropical depression, a low-lying, ill-protected washbasin of a metropolis and a lying, ill-equipped Bush-backed, bushwhacked government agency.
It’s the obvious plot-line - one I assumed as the album’s muse- one I assumed erroneously- one entirely absent from the story of the record’s sound.
However it came about, this pairing was due. Costello- whose cast of past deckhands reads as able-bodied as any the industry boasts- be they Attractions or Imposters, rockers, rollers or lounge-acts- didn’t need a “right-now” cohort to keep him relevant in the dulls hours after the whole 9-11-thing got tired and the whole “calling the president a moron on wax” thing lost its edge. This “obvious” step to record with Toussaint- be he the “gray-haired African-American it-man” of the year or not- was a decision prompted earnestly by Costello’s apparent need to keep himself interested by matching his ripe nasal notes to the rhythm of an equally-matched artist.
DATELINE:
New York- November-December 2005: Political bearings lend an overdue response-boost to a soulful rhythm-and-bluesman eloquently trimmed below a modest afro and above a waiting Wurlitzer, tossing him into the studio with a purposefully-posed pop-punk poster-boy whose stubborn breed of “available-for-take-out-but-not-delivery musical ingenuity” could be aptly termed “fringe-inuity.”
THE UPSHOT:
What could be expected: Allen’s classic stylings tirelessly keep pace with Elvis’s self-aware and collaborative-friendly pop-ward musings.
THE DETAILS:
Arrangements of horns, howls and a here-and-there hop pay blatant homage to American standards, while never jumping-the-shark with over-kill nostalgia for a bluesman’s lost homeland or the identifiable effects of a punk-geek’s genre-peppered past. Smooth when it wants to be persuasive (All These Things), sharp when it wants to cuts through persuasion (Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further?) and momentarily bloated when it wants to jazz up its tail but accidentally rings like a Hughie Lewis & the News lost track,(Wonder Woman) The River in Reverse, in its entirety, is most manageable, on average, as a mood-setter- best, in all, in 3-to-5-track doses as a trip-around-the-block accompaniment, and lacking, it seems, as an A.D.D. 1-hit spinner, boasting no single defining or stand-out track.
Long validated in his own realm, Toussaint can walk away in reverse from The River should he wish, as his new-found re-found fame, and not he, has lagged in pace in their three-legged race. Costello, as well, can keep the recording session Polaroids and toss the reviews, having produced what sounds to be a “for-the-fun-of-it” endeavor that requires no over-the-shoulder defenses.
THE END:
Not a bomb or a wave, and least of all a quick-cash-in/eager promotional debacle, this musical handshake between mutually-respecting titans of their craft is enjoyable, together or apart from its historical context.
WHAT’S NEXT:
(See Billy Joel and Dr. John for more details) |