Elvis Costello & The Impostors, Look Now

Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Look Now

Elvis Costello emerged first as a frenetic, punk-adjacent provocateur and then morphed into a polished pop songwriter and balladeer in the within a decade.Look Now is of the latter persuasion, as Costello and his collaborators arrange most of these songs in the style of 60s and 70s pop/rock with lots of pianos, back-up singers, and a fair bit of brass. There’s a strong vocal jazz element and a bit of Broadway too. Costello’s been writing a musical with Burt Bacharach, and that shows in the lyrics as well as the music, as he’s clearly grown to love writing in character. (A number of the narrative voices on these songs are expressly female, and it works). Some of us may be inclined to long for the younger, rawer Elvis Costello on principle, but there’s no denying his pop songcraft. Highlights: “Unwanted Number,” “He’s Given Me Things,” “Under Lime”

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Hop Along, Bark Your Head Off Dog

Hop Along, Bark Your Head Off, Dog This Philadelphia band’s complex, literate, off-kilter indie rock gets better with every listen. This could never be pop music, no matter who produced it or what instruments they used. It is too strange, singlar and too unrestrained. Singer Frances Quinlan’s melodic acrobatics are all over the map — “angular” doesn’t begin to cover it — and the rest of the band careens along wildly; the whole thing barely holds together, in the most wonderful way. The same guy who told Mozart he used “too many notes” would’ve said the same to Hop Along and he’d be similarly wrong. The string section, the backing vocals and the occasional synths are apparently new with this album and they offset the band’s punk-infused spirit perfectly. Highlights: “Prior Things,” “The Fox in Motion,” “What the Writer Meant”

Loma, Loma

Loma , Loma A beautiful, folk-tinged but electronically adept indie art-rock debut from a Texan trio with a sound all its own, Loma came about when Cross Repair (chiefly Emily Cross and her then husband / musical engineer Dan Duszynski) toured as the opening act for Jonathan Melburg’s Shearwater. The resulting trio is a best-of-all-worlds scenario in which Cross’s voice makes exquisite use of Melburg’s lyrics and melodies, and Duszynski engineers and mixes the music. Sonically it’s a shapeshifter, owing to a Duszysnki using a giant toolbox of sound, folk and electronica and rock and spectral pop instrumentation each coming and going as the songs call for them, and a wide variety in tone as well. Tragically for Cross and Duszynski’s marriage was ending, but the music certainly doesn’t suffer for that. Highlights: “Relay Runner,” “Dark Oscillations,” “Joy”

Caroline Rose, Loner

Caroline Rose, Loner Diverging wildly from both her roots rock and folk pasts, Caroline Rose’s new dance pop album sounds as bright red as her album covers. Having made a deliberate shift to bring her songs more in line with her musical interests and with her playful, sometimes caustic sense of humor, Rose hams it up a fair bit but she’s in her power the entire time and has plenty to say. The instrumentation and production are exquisite, guitars and synths and percussion in perfect synergy. Highlights: “Money,” “Soul № 5,” Bikini”

Album Reviews by Stefan Wenger

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