Elvis Costello continues to reinvent his sound in his latest release, Newspaper Pane.
Nobody put him up to this. Sitting atop a trove of chart-gracing hits, Elvis Costello did not need another album to secure his legacy as the grandfather of British pop-punk. He certainly didn’t need the money, either. Yet the sixty-six-year-old songwriter stepped into the studio once more, and yet again, he refuses to play the role of rock-star-retiree. While his contemporaries are reliving their glory days, writing boilerplate tunes in the keys of their former successes, Costello is moving forward. His new five song EP, “Newspaper Pane,” incorporates genres from New Orleans Jazz to Alternative Rock, reaching into territories previously unconnected to the Costello catalog. The EP will be annexed as part of Costello’s 31st studio album, Hey Clockface, which is set for release on October 30th (yes, you read that correctly—his thirty-first studio album).
The EP’s opening track, “Newspaper Pane,” enters upon a hollow soundscape, which is suddenly cut by the discordant twinge of an electric guitar. A backbeat clicks into place, manufacturing an industrial groove. For a moment, listeners may be fooled into believing that they’re playing someone else’s track; the monotonous, percussive instrumentation is far removed from Costello’s classic projective, guitar-laden tone. Then, a squealing, nasal voice punches through the mix, leaving no doubt of the artist’s identity. The first lines paint a scene of a woman deserted in her dilapidated apartment. She plasters newspapers to the wall “to keep out the nonsense/ to block out the needing.” His poeticism primed, Costello winds through rhymes with a flicker of Dylan-esque symbolism and a flair of his own fatalist wit. The song’s energy surges into the third verse, “Pictures of bright futures somehow ignored/ That offered her finery she could never afford/ Tempting out savings that she didn’t have or could never risk/ Not a fashionable kindness, it was grotesque.” Costello’s evocative appeal against the corrosive effects of tabloids and other sensationalized media is poignant here, and extends throughout the rest of the song. True to his style, Costello rattles off imaginative, vivid verses faster than we have time to process them. Upon the line “A bent note on a horn I can’t play,” a row of tart, trite trumpets intervene, moving Costello’s cultural grievances forward with greater intensity. Costello’s bellicose voice balances the broody instrumentation, producing a song that is classic in content and novel in sound.
If the EP’s first song steps into unmarked territory, the second song, “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?” catapults Costello into another galaxy. Rather than revert to his pop-punk roots or elaborate upon the alternative rock aura articulated in the previous track, Costello takes a dive into jazz. No, he was not just inspired by jazz. He did merely not incorporate elements of jazz into his song. Costello is swinging and scatting (yes, scatting!) with the vigor of a New Orleans trumpeter. Bouncing rhymes off a beat of bass and brass, Costello croons to a clockface, wishing for its hands to slow down and give him more time. The song’s campy, fantastical pitch connects seamlessly with the swinging beat, producing a truly vaudevillian tune. A second seal of authenticity is stamped into the EP’s liner notes—Costello is backed by the Parisian jazz ensemble Le Quintette Saint Germaine. As a whole, this formidable facsimile of swing jazz further proves Costello’s abilities to succeed in any genre.
After strolling about the French Quarter, Costello circles back to the desolate cityscape of alternative rock in his third song, “We Are All Cowards Now.” The song begins with one long ooooh—a harmony of layered backing vocals. Then, as quickly as he teases this morsel of pop, he subverts it in a miasma of static and white noise. Pressure builds into a frictional stroke of percussion and is released with a resonant twang of electric guitar. This repeats again and again into a mechanical beat. Costello’s voice chimes in, offering a cryptic critique of war. Lines, such as “pretty confetti, chemical debt/ A necessity to bleed,” are eloquent. However, together these verses fail to make a coherent point or paint a descriptive story. While aesthetically pleasing, Costello’s lyrics fail to distinguish themselves from the heap of poetry that laments the terrors of war. Still, the song is redeemable beyond the writing. Costello injects his lyrics with a melodramatic melody that locks in with the obscure, experimental beat, producing an eclectic and intriguing sound.
Costello continues his theme of sensational journalism in the EP’s fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential.” The tune follows Hetty O’Hara, a deft journalist whose well-followed gossip column “could kill a man with one single stroke.” Yet all her power and influence could not prevent her fall from grace. After publishing scandalous piece about the wrong person, O’Hara is assassinated by a vengeful vigilante. Costello comments “they’ve got witch trials now/ with witches to spare… Hetty said “I’m powerless and I feel alone”/ Now everyone has a megaphone.” Costello’s story is a vivid portrayal of the powers and perils of modern media. It would make quite the page-turner if ever sent to print. Yet, we may be more fortunate to receive this in the form of song. Costello builds a boisterous beat by layering snippets of himself beatboxing, which combine with his raucous vocals to create a sound just as hair-raising as the story he tells.
The fifth and final track, “No Flag,” is a homecoming for Costello. While it lacks the same initiative for innovation as heard on previous tracks, there’s praise to be made in mastering nostalgia. Costello’s opening whine, “I’ve got no religion, I’ve got no philosophy,” could be plucked straight out of his years of youthful rebellion. Bright guitars and abrasive vocals pull more notes into the melody than previous tracks, further achieving the pop-punk aesthetic of Costello’s earliest albums. If it seems out of place for a senior citizen to be wailing of his inability to fit in with mainstream society, remember that this is Elvis Costello. He clearly saved up enough cultural angst in the 1970s to last him the next half-century of his career. The rebellious content is not disingenuous, it’s just Elvis being Elvis. To be sure, “No Flag” is not a complete repackaging of ancient material. The electronically altered organ and synthetic drum machine pepper the song with enough modernity to make this seemingly classic song coherent with the other, more experimental tracks on the EP.
Costello’s new EP spans an impressive range of sounds for its size. For those in search of alternative rock, “Newspaper Pane” and “We Are All Cowards Now” provide a modern, metallic feel. Meanwhile, those longing for the jazz of yore will find comfort in “Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me.” For the bookish listener, the fourth track, “Hetty O’Hara Confidential,” is a delectable piece of fiction. Finally, Costello invites his veteran fans into the fold with “No Flag,” a shimmering homage to his past tempestuousness. With such variety, one can only begin to imagine what genres Costello will explore in his full album, Hey Clockface, set for release on Friday.