I saw Elvis Costello at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, Connecticut a few years ago. At the time, he had just formed the Imposters, and he and his cohorts put on a great show. They banged and crashed their way through the hard rockers, and they treated the slower songs with care. But I didn’t love the concert.
That wasn’t Elvis’s fault. Rather, it was the fault of the people in front of me. The Oakdale had just been renovated, and Volvo had sponsored a “lounge” in the back of the theatre. Every few minutes, some middle-aged hipster would get up, squeeze his way down the aisle, and come back with a gin and tonic or a Red Stripe. It was depressing.
Fortunately, Elvis and his bandmates haven’t let their middle age get in their way. (If only some of their fans would learn the same lesson!) Momofuku is a wonderful album—crisp, sharp, loud, and well played. (It’s also hot mastered to within an inch of its life, but I’m going to have to stop mentioning that in every review I write or the record companies will hunt me down.) These songs display much of the venom and bite that made Elvis and his Attractions famous, but there are enough stylistic differences to keep the album intriguing and fresh. The opening track, “No Hiding Place,” is as rollicking a song as Elvis has ever recorded. The lovely “Flutter and Wow” recalls his King of America period, and “Song with Rose” jangles and slides while Elvis sings about days that “dragged on like cigarettes.” Costello is one of the many performers (including Marianne Faithfull, Bob Dylan, and Neil Diamond) whose voice has gotten better with age. Although he is a much more confident singer than he has been in the past, the songs on Momofuku are unpolished enough that he does not sound overconfident.
Elvis Costello has gone through many iterations during his thirty-year-long career. He has been angry punk, orchestral crooner, country bumpkin, and Bacharach’s right-hand man. The one thing that has remained constant throughout, however, is his unwillingness to forget where he started. Sure, nothing on this collection is as musically and lyrically straightforward as “Welcome to the Working Week” or as complex and complicated as “God Give Me Strength,” but it’s obvious to me that Elvis Costello has been able to apply each lesson he’s learned with each passing album to the songs on Momofuku. It’s almost as if this is a greatest hits collection that focuses on styles, not songs. As such, it’s a terrific outing from a singer who has found a label that will embrace him and a cadre of fans who will follow him everywhere.
I just hope that the next time I see him in concert, the Volvo Lounge will be closed, and these fans will be able—like Elvis—to rock and roll again.
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