Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane & Sugarcane
2 June 2009
Hear Music
Review by Nick Brandes

So, I think it’s fair to say that Elvis Costello likes to move around.  Not like Dylan and literally move around, but genre wise.  You could call him the proverbial bouncy ball of music, hitting everywhere based upon the direction of any number of things, but whereas Costello’s direction sometimes fall off, this album hits it just right.

This is the kind of music you expect to hear in the mountains somewhere, while they’re filming Deliverance, but in a good way.  And it’s on the song “Hidden Change” where he sings, “I'm sorry to say that you don't know me/I'm sad in ways you never understood/Each time I try to tell the ugly truth/You always let it pass you by/You said I'd never tell you a lie/Just because I could.”  Costello is lyrical genius; one of the true great poets who decided his best chance to be heard was to write some of the grandest songs that have ever been released.

Perhaps, what’s best here though is “Changing Partners.”  It’s a bitterly sweet song that has some sadness to it.  He sings, “We were dancing together/To a dreamy melody/When they called out, "Change partners"/And you waltzed away from me.”  It’s beautiful and unlike most other bands, when Elvis sings it, there’s a tone in his voice that gives us an understanding that what he’s singing, he’s meaning. 

I wish Mr. Costello would stay in this area, his wheel house, and filter out all those who try to pass this way; because, this is his music, his genre, his baby, and with this album he clearly places himself on the same level of such pop-folk-Americana-genre jumping genius like Dylan and even, gag me with a spoon but I must say it, Conor Oberst.