Music

Elvis Costello & the Impostors

Momofuku (Lost Highway)

By Robert Wilonsky 

Pardon, if you will, but the bliss is almost too much to bear—and that's before the needle greets the record. (Ah, yes, right: "needle" and "record." Children, do ask your grandparents.) Costello—still ignoring the expiration date stamped "1986," the date of his most, ahem, recent must-own—has finally rushed to market two discs of unfortunately titled gatefold black vinyl here, into the grooves of which he's imparted a groove. This is especially true of the first track on Side Two of the two-fer: the slinky "Harry Worth," featuring the coos and ahhhs of Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis and other special guests, over which E.C. reminds, "It's not very far from tears to mirth/It's not many moments that will capture your breath." This is one of them.

Shorn of too-good-to-rock novelties (string-quartet yawns, N'awlins nods, Bacharach blues, etc.) and absent the trying-too-hard missteps, Costello hasn't sounded so refreshed, relaxed, engaged or enraged in years; same goes for Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas, who remain the main Attractions alongside Impostor Davey Faragher. It almost plays like a career retrospective in 12-song miniature, with the sneering, no-wave Elvis ("American Gangster Time," "No Hiding Place") commingling with the catchy, country Costello ("Song with Rose," co-written with Rosanne Cash; "Pardon Me, Madam, My Name is Eve," a Loretta Lynn co-write) hanging with the Tin Pan Alley Declan (the bouncy, brash "Mr. Feathers") with his arm draped over the mighty-like-a-McManus ("Turpentine," which sounds like a Spike outtake, for better or, more likely, worse)—and all of 'em on their way to 1980, back when Costello's idea of a throwaway was the Taking Liberties, the punk. This should have been the record titled The Delivery Man.