Elvis Costello<\/a>\u2019s show at the Iveagh Gardens is pretty lacklustre. He launches straight into Pump It Up, but the sound is ironically quiet.<\/p>\nMystery Dance and Watching the Detectives follow, and throughout these first few numbers Costello appears, rather hauntingly, to be chewing gum.<\/p>\n
Not in a confrontational, Nina Simone kind of way but in a way that makes you wonder if he wants to be there at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood so many of you came to see the body,\u201d he says, rather poignantly in on the joke about the lifelessness of his own gig. \u201cWe were going to call this tour The Early Songs of the Late Elvis Costello, but we thought some people might get the wrong idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that, at this point, the concert feels more like a tribute act, dutifully ticking through the classics, showcasing his brilliant lyricism and stylistic range. The band do everything required of them with real professionalism, if not a great amount of excitement.<\/p>\n
Introducing Less Than Zero, about Oswald Mosley, Costello reflects that it\u2019s 49 years since he wrote it. \u201cBack when I was working in an office, I thought, what do we need in a rock song today? A song about a filthy old fascist.\u201d<\/p>\n
He comments that the song feels prescient (maybe, but it loses mystique to say it yourself) before adding that he should have played it on Independence Day, \u201cbut it\u2019s a day late, just like everything these days\u201d.<\/p>\n
His voice is patchy for much of the night. He mentions having picked up bronchitis in Brussels. If that\u2019s the cost of still touring at 71, then it\u2019s hard not to admire the determination.<\/p>\n
There is one curious moment before Everyday I Write the Book where it sounds as though a touch of AutoTune slips into the vocal. For a second it\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n
What if Costello used the unreliability of his vocals as part of the act? What if he experimented with the creative potential of AutoTune, as a lot of contemporary musicians are doing, and reinvented his discography? But the effect disappears as quickly as it arrived.<\/p>\n
The concert improves dramatically in its second half. Lovable lifts the mood, while a superb medley of A Good Year for the Roses and Suspicious Minds gets the crowd crooning.<\/p>\n
The evening\u2019s standout guest is the uilleann piper Se\u00e1n McKeon, whose contributions to Little Palaces are beautiful, and who then delivers a virtuosic solo that earns the biggest cheer of the night so far.<\/p>\n
Costello finds his footing as the show goes on. His between-song stories are truly charming. Showing off his cowboy boots, he tells the crowd, \u201cI bought them from the pampered son of an infamous New York slumlord. I paid in crypto.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Alison, he deadpans, \u201cI dropped this song from my tour because the girls who liked me didn\u2019t want to hear another woman\u2019s name.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time he closes the two-hour set with (What\u2019s So Funny \u2018Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, he has won the audience back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elvis Costello & The ImpostersIveagh Gardens, Dublin\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 The opening stretch of Elvis Costello\u2019s show at the Iveagh Gardens…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[57582,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-535669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-elvis-costello","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}