ELVIS COSTELLO & THE ROOTS
Wise Up Ghost
[Blue Note-2013]
As he pushes 60, it’s obvious to even the most casual of
observers, punk’s literate Angry Young Man has mellowed considerably over the
years. But Elvis Costello’s penchant for placing himself in different and
sometimes disparate settings from his own has been a constant throughout his
career: from the album of country covers Almost Blue [Columbia-1981] to his
collaborations with The Brodsky String Quartet and Burt Bacharach,
respectively, the former Declan McManus likes to mix it up, as it were.
And when you couple that with the rare music geek/musician combo that is Roots leader ?uestlove, and release your efforts on the legendary Blue Note
label for that extra bit of hip cachet, this is the kind of joint venture that
should’ve gone down ages ago, just for the marketing orgasm alone. But don’t
believe the hype. Not most of it anyway.
Wise Up Ghost is the proverbial mix of chocolate and peanut
butter making a valiant attempt at reaching for Reese’s Pieces glory and only
intermittently getting there. (“Viceroy’s Row” might be the perfect
distillation of their respective talents.) Both sides rise to the occasion for
the most part, but it works best when Costello pushes The Roots closer to his
corner, as opposed to the instances where he seems a bit lost, as if he recognizes
the buildings but not the neighborhood.
