National Ransom - November 2010

[jardine]

what sort of outlet is there, if any, for something more thoughtful and interesting, where elvis could stretch out and think and explore the rich abundance that is going on here, and have the chance to enjoy doing so, like i expect he really would. i was actually hoping for a rolling stone cover of elvis. secretsisters, elton, leon, and t-bone, and a long detail interviews. devote the whole issue to them or something.

i guess, in the end, the reason it feels so deeply frustrating this time 'round is because i really think national ransom is so much more deserving than anything else out there...

[verbal gymnastics]

He could look at the comments on this Board.

[Jeremy Dylan]

i guess, in the end, the reason it feels so deeply frustrating this time 'round is because i really think national ransom is so much more deserving than anything else out there...

In a sense, it's also the ultimate Elvis Costello album - equal parts THIS YEAR'S MODEL mod-rock, KING OF AMERICA folk-rock, BLOOD & CHOCOLATE proto-grunge, MY FLAME BURNS BLUE jazz, NORTH balladeering, DELIVERY MAN country-soul and SP&S skiffle.

[Ypsilanti]

i hate to even venture this out loud, but i do really believe that elvis is too "something" for a lot of people, including a lot of critics, to understand or to like immediately and quickly and passively. his work always requires something of me, some effort that always, to varying degrees, pays off for the effort. and the better his work is, the more work it asks of me, and the more willing i am to take that time and effor. if you give something to his work, you'll get something wonderful in return, and if you don't or won't or can't, its quality won't appear. . . he'll just remain the formerly-angry guy, or the genre hopper, just wordy or pretentious or whatever. or a friend of mine will repeatedly talk about long melody lines that are hard for him to follow even though he's never worked at it when he faces this problem, just "attributed" it to Elvis' wanderings.

since his first album, i've listened over and over and allowed it to grow and myself to grow with it. and with many of them, that first listen is a "jar" that makes me think "wait a minute. What???" and i realize that i need to "go" somewhere and do something, practice something, if i'm going to meet him halfway. even though it varies greatly over his career, he's rarely failed me in this effort.

I'd say you're absolutely right, Jardine. EC records do require a little effort.

Sadly the music press are, for the most part, way too stupid and lazy. Actually, our whole culture is...

All these talentless idiots who sing into Auto-tune are selling millions of records and getting tons of airplay and winning Grammys. Kayne West and Beyonce are called artists . Rolling Stone only wants to put Katy Perry's tits on the cover. These days, a gap-toothed old Limey would never make the cut.

The thing is, Elvis actually is an artist. But the music business isn't about that anymore. And who is more reviled in American culture than artists? In my experience, in most people's minds, the word "artist" is a just a synonym for "asshole" or "freak" or "Communist".

It's really sad. Elvis ought to be on the top of the heap. The very top. Can you imagine how cool and amazing it would be to actually write--create out of thin air--one really great song? And then get to sing it and record it and perform it in concerts all over the world? And then if you wrote hundreds of really great songs? What he's done with his life is absolutely incredible. He doesn't get nearly enough acclaim--and more to the point--not nearly enough respect for the work he's done--for the art he's given the world. And not for nothing...he works his ass off doing it, too.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.spin.com/reviews/elvis-coste ... hear-music

Elvis Costello
'National Ransom'

Revived King of America seeks to reclaim crown

By Mikael Wood, Spin, Oct. 27 '10

With livelier playing and more memorable tunes, Costello's second straight collaboration with producer T Bone Burnett is a major improvement over last year's ho-hum Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. Here, the new-wave legend flexes his trademark sneer in a handful of hurtling, rootsy rave-ups about corporate crooks (check Marc Ribot's electric-guitar stabs on the title track). But Costello steps up most strongly on gorgeous ballads like "All These Strangers" and "You Hung the Moon," the latter of which could fool your grandparents into thinking they'd heard it at a V-J Day dance.

[johnfoyle]

Terry Staunton, Record Collector, Dec. '10

Elvis Costello
National Ransom
Hear Music 7232142
5 stars

Back so soon?

Though advance copies of a Costello compilation of 21st century songs, Pomp & Pout, have been circulating for months, its street date has been put back to some time in 2011. The delay is arguably due to Elvis, ever the spontaneous master of his own destiny, rushing out yet another album of new material, his third in two-and­a-half years.

It's a work rate comparable to his late 70s beginnings, albeit met by significantly less sales; but today's Costello seems unconcerned with the bottom line, happily making the music he wants to, when he wants to. National Ransom was recorded in just 11 days, a similar timescale to 2008's Momofuku, and there are garage-like elements of that album on the chug of the title track and the Merseybeat scream of The Spell That You Cast. Last year's Secret, Profane & Sugarcane is the template for the country gallop of Five Small Words and saloon lament That's Not The Part Of Him You're Leaving.

Where its two predecessors stuck to loose musical themes, however, here Costello is in eclectic mood, all jazz torch on You Hung The Moon, vaudevillian biographer on Jimmie Standing In The Rain (a terrific portrait of a cowboy singer down on his luck on the 30s English music hall circuit), and raging preacher of doom on Church Underground. This is a densely plotted, constantly surprising record that contains some of his best songs for years. It may take a while to fully digest its glorious contents, by which time Costello will probably have another album ready for us!

[cwr]

Staunton's review actually takes note that it's a GOOD thing that Costello is prolific, compared to the mopey bitching that too many music writers have resorted to. Good for him.

[Man out of Time]

Just listened to the Janice Long programme on here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0 ... 28_09_2010

At 1:11:12 she plays I Lost You and goes on to say that Elvis will be "turning out on her show" soon.

On this morning's show, at the very start she talks about spending the afternoon with Elvis (prior to his appearance on Simon Mayo's drive time show) and him wandering around the studios with his guitar. Curiously silent though on whether he has recorded any material for her show. Watch this space....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... 8_10_2010/

[johnfoyle]

http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=28915

http://www.newsok.com/cd-review-elvis-c ... line_music

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/mus ... 176p9.html

[Jeremy Dylan]

I find it interesting that these reviewers are all singling out a different track as a standout, as if they only had time to listen to one track properly before writing their piece.

[John]

Just listened to the Janice Long programme on here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0 ... 28_09_2010

At 1:11:12 she plays I Lost You and goes on to say that Elvis will be "turning out on her show" soon.

On this morning's show, at the very start she talks about spending the afternoon with Elvis (prior to his appearance on Simon Mayo's drive time show) and him wandering around the studios with his guitar. Curiously silent though on whether he has recorded any material for her show. Watch this space....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... 8_10_2010/

During last night's show Janice says that Elvis will be "playing some tunes and chatting" next Friday (05 November).

[strangerinthehouse]

I find it interesting that these reviewers are all singling out a different track as a standout, as if they only had time to listen to one track properly before writing their piece.

Yeah, these reviews are funny. I especially like the following from the News Ok review:

"You Hung the Moon" is one of Costello's most romantic ballads since "Almost Blue."

[johnfoyle]

Japanese edition of 'Ransom , with extra track, Bobby Charles' I Hope. Bubble wrap, tissue paper, Tokyo to Dublin in 3 days - excellent job by CD Japan.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.htm ... 22&ref=myp


The booklet , by the way, is an exact copy of one in European edition, right down to the 'im Lauderdale' etc. typos. I Hopeis mentioned in the inserted translation item, with no personnel details. It is a band performance, voval, electric & bass guitars and drums.

[verbal gymnastics]

I'll also get the Japanese edition. Last time I ordered from Japan though I got stung for the import tax which made any saving worthless. It would have worked out as cheap to buy the Japanese edition in the UK.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/art ... le1778421/

A comment on You Hung the Moon -

http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/20 ... -costello/

[Top balcony]

Has anyone actually received the LP version yet?

Elvis keeps saying that it's really a double album ( as we used to call them in our youth) so where do the sides start and end? I'll take a wild guess that Ransom is side 1, track 1 and Voice is side 4 final track, but what about the rest?

I'm thinking of recreating the vinyl days by making up 4 CDs from the digital download.

Colin Top Balcony

[johnfoyle]

This site has this breakdown-

http://idealcopy.american-data.net/Merc ... 8072327009

LP One

1. National Ransom
2. Jimmie Standing In The Rain
3. Stations Of The Cross
4. A Slow Drag With Josephine
5. Five Small Words
6. Church Underground
7. You Hung The Moon
8. Bullets For The New-Born King

LP Two

1. I Lost You
2. Dr. Watson, I Presume
3. One Bell Ringing
4. The Spell That You Cast
5. That's Not The Part Of Him You're Leaving
6. My Lovely Jezebel
7. All These Strangers
8. A Voice In The Dark

Side One/Side Two breakdown? Haven't a clue!


The Amazon vinyl link -

http://www.amazon.com/National-Ransom-E ... er_title_0

[jardine]

Regarding the link to “great war fiction” and its meditation on “You Hung the Moon,” a few minor points (which i also posted on that website as a comment on that piece):

1. First of all, I think that, as with Ira Gershwin that the writer mentions, this is not “the singer” who is being condescending or oversimplifying, but the character singing the song, the one who sings, at one point “since he was taken from my side,” which just might give a hint of the voice, its era and its locale. This is fiction.

2. “Poor family” can mean the unfortunate family who now are dealing with death. “Oh when will they learn” is an antiquated phrase that is somewhat condescending, but it is precisely the sort of early-20th century “tsk-ing” that bespeaks the period and the moralizing sort of reprimand that would have surrounded desertion, I expect.

3. Tallow (see “Pills and Soap”) evokes the color of the skin of a corpse, and the image of rendered flesh.

4. A “shallow abyss” invokes a shallow grave (as per the image of a traitor’s grave quickly dug) and the abyss of death. A nice juxtaposition, I think, which jars.

5. He is not “patronizing people of the past” but speaking with a voice of the past. “Oh when will they learn” is NOT a contemporary utterance by “the singer,” but an old moralizing saying. Costello does not “assume the worst of the members of the officer class who are conventionally given the role of villains” but expresses this assumption through the fictional narrative he has constructed. He thus raises the question of the “officer class” (and the very idea that they are called a “class” is already telling, and then reflects back, as the writer seems to distain, on the use of “poor family”—“not officer class”. . .how’s that?) and what happens to those who get caught up in the vagaries of war.

6. “I think he thinks he is being a rebel and individualist for doing this.” Seems the author also thinks that Costello is “the kind of people who enjoy being indignant” and pursue “easy pathos.” These “dimly generalized and surely condescending” sentiments belie something of the very accusations flung at “the singer.”

[Ypsilanti]

Nicely said, Jardine! That blogger is an insipid dick and you really told him. You are a refreshing new voice on this site and I look forward to many interesting posts from you in the future. Very glad to have you on board.

[Pigalle]

Japanese edition of 'Ransom , with extra track, Bobby Charles' I Hope. Bubble wrap, tissue paper, Tokyo to Dublin in 3 days - excellent job by CD Japan.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.htm ... 22&ref=myp

Mine arrived in the UK today; posted out on Monday, therefore, five days to get here; less than excellent job by Royal Mail (it used to take just two days to get CDs from CD Japan to me). At least no import duties, though

[Jack of All Parades]

Jardine- you hit on several key components of this wonderful song- a song I have very much enjoyed since its first appearance on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz program earlier this year. The tallow, as you rightly point out, is very much related to the body, one need only think of the character Krook in Dicken's Bleak House with his death from self combustion as the body fats go up in flames. If our bodies were rendered to their essence after the water is passed we are mineral and fat, hence the 'tallow'. Most perceptive to pick up on the class element, as well. It is a theme that runs through the new album and which has a particularly strong expression within this song, one of two which is currently jockeying in my 'tallow' filled brain for favorite on the new record. Welcome aboard.

[pophead2k]

Got my copy in the mail today! Hoping 'Ransack' follows in my email soon. I have studiously avoided listening to any version of any of these songs, except for the three downloads I got when I purchased it and 'The Spell You Cast' free download. Needless to say, I'm anxious to give it a spin.

[wardo68]

Got my copy in the mail today! Hoping 'Ransack' follows in my email soon. I have studiously avoided listening to any version of any of these songs, except for the three downloads I got when I purchased it and 'The Spell You Cast' free download. Needless to say, I'm anxious to give it a spin.

These are my exact sentiments as well.

[Ypsilanti]

Mine came today. Right away I notice the illustration on the cover looks about 1000 times more awesome than it did online. Haven't even read the liner notes yet, though. Listening Party is tonight. Hub and I will listen whilst we have cocktails and carve pumpkins.

[jardine]

jealous and happy at the same time! i can't believe how much more detail was audible on the 3 songs downloaded or the colbertnation.com streaming compared to that other, well, you know, unauthentic version.

i can just barely hear some sort of spectacular clarinet thing over the last time himself sings "the shore is a parchment, the sea has no tide" in yhtm. let me know what it sounds like and enjoy enjoy enjoy.

by the way, that image of dried up love is so amazing all by itself...