National Ransom - November 2010

[krm]

I will get my copy on Monday. Hand delivered from Tokyo! Display photo from Tower Records, Akihabara, Tokyo

[cwr]

I'm so jealous of those who already have their actual copies!

I ordered the vinyl + download option from the website, and will buy a physical CD from a shop on Tuesday. (Checking my status, my vinyl has not shipped yet, which I don't mind as long as they are swift about sending that download so I can hear National Ransack ASAP!)

And fingers crossed that we can all buy "I Hope" as a single track from iTunes on Tuesday as well. Think of it: a double LP and an EP and an additional bonus track!!

It's so much more fun being a Costello fan when he is enthused about making records. Nothing beats it. Brutal Youth was the first new record he put out after I became a devoted fan, and what a thrill it was to come across a new import single every few months with a couple of new b-sides. A few years back, when Costello was bemoaning the state of the music industry and saying he might never record again-- that he was, and always had been, primarily a LIVE artist-- I found it really depressing, because for me, records, be they vinyl, cassette, CD or digital-- recorded music-- are the core of Costello's life's work. The tours are wonderful and thrilling and soul-enriching, but fifty years from now, a record like Get Happy!! or Mighty Like A Rose or National Ransom will be listened to by some 15-year old kid and it will be like they are discovering a buried treasure.

I hope that his new online approach, with these various options for fans to order various formats or deluxe packages, turns out to be a successful venture for Costello, because I feel like a good experience with National Ransom's release will spur him on to make another amazing record in 2011/2012...

[johnfoyle]

http://www.freep.com/article/20101031/E ... s-new-disc

[strangerinthehouse]

Here's a pretty thorough and positive review of National Ransom.

http://thehurstreview.wordpress.com/201 ... al-ransom/

Excerpt:
I’ll make the argument that National Ransom– album #33, but who’s counting?– is his most seamless and sophisticated assimilation of American musics and myths thus far. It’s another T-Bone production, but it’s both more ambitious than King of America– its vision of said musics here extending far beyond country-folk and the occasional rambling blues– and more deliberate than Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, an album of tossed-off charms diluted by the sinking suspicion that it was pieced together from table scraps. Ransom is wider-ranging, less a study of a particular musical idiom than a cinematic travelogue of the last hundred years or so of songs and stories from the land of want and plenty. Each song is a snippet, a scene from either the too-painful present or an age gone by but never forgotten; the music reflects the literary scope of the writing, moving with deft purpose through stringband numbers and jazzy torch songs, country weepers and the earliest formations of American rhythm and blues. The final song– “A Voice in the Dark”– could have been manufactured in Tin Pan Alley, and heard in any New York nightclub circa 1930.

There's also this:

http://thehurstreview.wordpress.com/201 ... -classics/

Five albums from EC's later output that deserve praise.

[John]

National Ransom has tonight entered the UK album chart at no. 71.

http://www.theofficialcharts.com/albums-chart/

He must really wonder if it's all worth it over here.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainm ... dings.html

[Jeremy Dylan]

Nice article on the record by the wonderful Peter Cooper. Nice quotes from EC and Jim. Wish it was longer;
http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2010 ... al-ransom/

[sweetest punch]

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Entertainment ... 07261.html

Costello appeals to the common man

By DARRYL STERDAN, QMI Agency

Elvis Costello has the workin' man blues.

Granted, his paycheque has a few more zeroes than yours and mine. He's more or less his own boss. And at the end of his shift, he goes home to Diana Krall.

But that doesn't deter the singer-songwriter from identifying with the common man and lamenting hard times -- or from lambasting Wall Street wolves -- on his latest CD National Ransom.

"I don't know about you, but I've worked every day of my life since I left school," the 56-year-old Costello says from the Vancouver digs he shares with Krall and their twin sons. "Somebody else profits from it. Obviously, I've made a pretty good living. But I've earned my money. I don't apologize for it. I don't do it at anybody else's expense. And I can't say that's necessarily true of some of the people that are referred to in National Ransom.

"But really, it's not me saying anything different than Merle Haggard's Working Man Blues. It's the same message, you know: We persevere."

Musically, National Ransom finds Costello picking up where he left off on last year's Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, delving into nostalgic American roots music with the help of producer T-Bone Burnett and VIP guests like Buddy Miller, Vince Gill and Leon Russell. With National Ransom due next week, the garrulous Costello gave us his thoughts on keeping busy, refreshing his back catalog and making a spectacle of himself. The highlights:

If I've got my math right, this is your 30th studio album in 34 years. Which begs the question: When are you going to stop loafing around?

Yes, I know! (Laughs) It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.

This one feels like a continuation and expansion of Sugarcane. Did you feel there was unfinished business there?

Only in the sense that we immediately went out on the road after making it, and I sensed there was a much greater range of possibility. I really am very fond of Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. It was a very vivid but very austere record, deliberately so. It was recorded in three days, so it was the first meeting of those six players. And really, the six never played simultaneously until we went out on the road. So the minute we got those songs out, they all changed. They became bigger and more colourful. And I began to sense what we could do.

Several of these songs are set musically or lyrically in '20s and '30s. What about that era and its music appeal to you?

I just like the little structures you can use. I'm not going to make any claims to it being rigidly authentic. I think you can hear the playfulness with it. I like the idea that we're not wedded to the notion of rock 'n' roll in leather trousers and teased-up hair. There's other kinds of rock 'n' roll too, you know. I think it's good to remember that.

You've remained very prolific at an age where many songwriters lose touch with the muse. What's your secret?

I suppose certain people would give you different views of whether I was connected with it or not, depending on how much they like my last recording -- or my last 12 recordings. (Laughs) I love people telling me how great my early records were, when they were mostly roundly ignored. But I never have really done anything out of routine. And I sort of feel like I can do it with much more freedom because I have access to a lot of different music and different techniques.

Is there anything left on your musical to-do list?

I've never thought ahead like that. I never even thought we were going to end up realizing this record to this degree of variety. I didn't go, 'I want to do all these things on this record.' And I'm not even thinking about the next record. I'm not even thinking as far ahead as the next performance. I know there will be some. But the shape of them is something I have great freedom about. I could play with The Imposters or The Sugarcanes, or I can play solo. Solo gives me a lot of freedom because I can go back into the catalog and pull songs out that sit with these.

Do your songs change their meaning over the years?

I think they do in company with new songs. With The Sugarcanes, I found -- not surprisingly, perhaps-- that King of America songs and Delivery Man songs sat well with Secret, Profane and Sugarcane songs. But I also found a way to play some songs that were well known, like (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes and Alison and Everyday I Write the Book in arrangements that sounded like they belonged. So those songs became really fresh to me again. And I enjoyed singing them. I never put a song in simply out of routine, but inevitably, if you have sung it lots and lots of times, you have to go that little bit further to find a way to make it fresh.

Are you doing another season of Spectacle?

At the moment it's in suspended animation. The most important thing is that having done 20 episodes, I'm happy with what we did. We had a great variety of people. And we came very close to getting a couple of people that would have been fantastic, but just at the last minute something happened. So I'm grateful for the opportunities that gave to me.

[sweetest punch]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Elvis+ ... story.html


Elvis Costello intones crises, sounds of the past and new-found Canadian identity in latest album
On National Ransom, Costello paints 16 vignettes of the times we live in.
By FRANCOIS MARCHAND, Vancouver Sun

Over the phone from his West Vancouver residence, where he and his wife, Canadian jazz chanteuse Diana Krall, spend a good part of their time, you can clearly hear their four-year-old twins, Dexter Henry Lorcan and Frank Harlan James, running amok in the background.

“Yeah, I have to go play referee in a minute,” Costello says with a chuckle.

If the ruckus at home gives Costello a reason to smile, an entirely different — and much more serious — kind of turmoil makes up the core theme of his latest album, National Ransom, released today.

The album cover, designed by famed cartoonist/illustrator Tony Millionaire, is striking: a wolf dressed in business attire, money flying out of its attache case, catching fire as it floats through the air. The scene, with oil rigs, fighter jets and the “all-seeing eye” pyramid of the American dollar in the background, is framed within a bill design that emulates various international currencies.

The message is clear: The wolf — an embodiment of the big banks, multinational corporations and greedy politicians profiting from bailouts and handouts — isn’t at the door any more. It has pillaged and plundered your home, and now it is making a run for it.

On National Ransom, Costello paints 16 vignettes of the times we live in — financial crisis, war, global uncertainty — stamped with the echoes of crises past and their musical cornerstones. He does so with a poignant spirit, sonically touching upon the swinging ’20s, the dust bowl twang of the Great Depression, the gospel and soul of the inner city, and the rock ’n’ roll-inflected strife of modern times, and through the characters, real and imagined, living within the stories in his songs.

“It’s not to say that it’s not circumstances that people haven’t confronted before,” Costello says of the concept behind National Ransom. “This particular ‘ransom’ has been called for on a number of occasions, but we’re living through it now.

“We don’t know where it’s going. For better or for worse, business is global. Therefore the impact and the responsibility of every transaction is international.

“We feel like the very fabric of our domestic lives is in some way compromised if not actually threatened, but there’s someone else somewhere that didn’t have a house to begin with because of these transactions or their house is being hit by a rocket or something because of some conflict inextricably linked to all of this. It’s that which makes it different.

“The characters in some of the songs are walking through the times when these sort of conditions applied in the past,” Costello adds, “and I’ve borrowed some of the musical structures from there. I’m not trying to replicate songs from those eras exactly. I’m using hints of that music to bring these songs and characters to life the best I can. And they’re new songs: They’re being played in the present moment with the immediacy of new songs.”

Recorded in just 11 days in Nashville and Los Angeles, National Ransom is populated by tales of misfortune and regret: A cowboy singer playing musical halls in England in the ’30s (Jimmie Standing in the Rain), a regretful assassin (Bullets for the New-Born King), a nightclub singer going from obscurity to infamy (Church Underground).

For Costello, these are all archetypes whose stories could take place at any point in time.

“There’s a song on the album (You Hung the Moon) that is set in 1919 in the wake of (the First World War), but I could’ve written a song about the horror of a family trying to deal with the loss of an executed soldier — a deserter — at any time in the past 30 years. That story has always existed.”

That song, a soft acoustic ballad, allows Costello to dig up a soulful vocal tone rich and deep, making way for one of his dreamiest offerings to date.

“I haven’t always had the confidence to sing in that way; it’s the way I would sing privately,” he says. “I started by finding a guitar that sat with my voice, and the guitar I’m using on that one and Bullets for the New-Born King is a smaller body guitar so my voice doesn’t have to compete with anything. It just tucks behind it. And I’m playing with the pads of my fingers. I haven’t really played a guitar like that for public consumption. I used to play like that when I was a teenager but never really carried it on because I got into playing the electric guitar.”

The cast Costello called upon for National Ransom is a familiar one: All the members of Costello’s backing bands the Imposters and the Sugarcanes appear at one point or another, along with guests Vince Gill, Marc Ribot, Buddy Miller and Leon Russell (who also just released a duet album with Elton John).

“Having that great range of musicians at my disposal and the kind of environment for performing in the studio was fantastic,” Costello says. “It really is ‘performing.’ It’s not produced in a ‘factory assembly line’ way. You do one rehearsal and play it and that’s it.”

For some, recording a layered, richly textured album this way could be a daunting task, but Costello knew he was in good hands with such a stellar musical roster, not to mention that longtime friend and collaborator T Bone Burnett was handling the production.

“He’s the greatest, you know?” Costello says of Burnett. “His touch is very light. He knows when to step out of the room and when to come back in. He pursues the realization of the sound: He’s very dogged and very meticulous.

“It’s a combination of the completely spontaneous and then the very, very minute but really consequential balances in mixing. You would be amazed by how, when you record like this, a one-decibel alteration in the balance of one instrument can transform the balance of the whole ensemble. It’s refined in the sense that it’s a process that’s being refined, rather than in the sense that it’s being rarefied and polished in some manner that is pushing it away from the emotional truth of the music.”

As for how much influence being a “guest Canadian” has had on the making of National Ransom, Costello admits it’s often hard to remember exactly where the songs were conceived and written. However, he admits spending a lot of time in Vancouver and raising his twins here has helped provide him with a brand new perspective of the world.

“My boys were born in New York, so in this family we’re three nationalities,” Costello says. “Maybe that’s a good thing, looking across the border from Canada into the States or from England into Europe and vice versa. I’m very fortunate that the working life I have allows me those perspectives and how it feeds into the songs. You have to look at the geographical relation (on National Ransom): There are songs set in London, there are songs set in the north of England, there are songs set in the past, there are songs set in the future, there are songs set in an imaginary place. I don’t doubt that the peace and decency I’ve encountered day to day, predominantly here, allows you the time to think and to do the writing.”

In a way, Costello contends, his new-found Canadian identity may have truly taken shape when he took part in Hal Wilner’s Neil Young Project during the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, which had him start thinking about a planned cross-Canada tour (something he hasn’t done since 1978) that would lead him all the way to the Maritimes (where he has never played).

“I was astounded by the reaction I got when I walked onto the stage and realized that, to some degree, I seem to be regarded as belonging here now,” Costello says. “I’ve never really felt that way anywhere, including in London where I was born.”

[Terry C.]

It seems the demand for the vinyl version has taken them by suprise...
I mean the album was only announced, what 5 months ago? Do they wait until a week before release to start pressing these things?
I found my download email in my spam folder at 7pm tonight.
Here is the full text from the email:

"Hello!

You may have already received a similar e-mail but we are re-sending links to everyone to be 100% certain your digital copy of National Ransom arrives safely and downloads properly. We've also included some updates on product shipments below.

Thank you for ordering the new Elvis Costello album, National Ransom. As promised this e-mail contains links to download your full digital copy of the album, National Ransom, as well as the 4-song National Ransack digital EP (if you previously downloaded the the album but could not find your copy of the National Ransack EP try again with this link).

Please choose your format and click the corresponding button below once - your download should begin immediately. If you have questions about which format is right for you, we have provided information and links.

- The Elvis Costello team at Concord Music Group

Product Shipping Update

If your order includes physical product, CDs, T-shirts and Lithographs have begun shipping. If they have not arrived already, they will arrive shortly - please allow for variations in shipping time. Due to overwhelming demand we've had to up our Vinyl quantities and they will begin shipping at the end of this week.

Note: if you ordered the Deluxe with Vinyl or Limited Edition package, and receive a shipment without the Vinyl LP the record will ship to you seperately and at no additional shipping cost to you.

If you have questions contact us at ElvisCostelloTS@ConcordMusicGroup.com."

[jardine]

just got both downloads, ransom and ransack. still feels the same as 1977 and even back before that, something new arrives and i used to tuck a new lp under my arm and hurry home and shut the doors. i'm old enough to remember doing this with a hard day's night, and then that anticipation starts, waiting for something new (pun partially intended) and an agonizing FOUR MONTHS until the release of I feel fine in December 1964.

it really is something to be "inside" of a living artist's work as it arrives, alive and paying attention at the time. much different than the many artists whose work i've caught up to but wasn't waiting for...anyway, off to shut the doors!

[Jeremy Dylan]

Interview on WFUV, with a bit about his Century of Progress, which he then proceeds to play The Spell That You Cast on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1mnLZhFL6E

[johnfoyle]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov20 ... -n03.shtml

[wardo68]

A surprisingly negative review from Jim Farber of the NY Daily News, with whom I usually agree:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainmen ... nsom_.html

[johnfoyle]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/music/news/ar ... d=10685095

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/the ... 87896.html

[strangerinthehouse]

Here'e one from the Onion's AV Club:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/elvis-co ... som,47084/

They gave the album a B+

[John]

If Amazon.com's chart is anything to go by the album seems to be selling quite well in the US. Currently at no. 17.

In the mp3 album chart it's at no.3, still at $3.99.

[johnfoyle]

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2010/ ... al-ransom/

http://www.linncountyleader.com/enterta ... nal-Ransom

http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/scene/a ... nal-ransom

[invisible Pole]

Not sure if this has been posted elsewhere.
Very favourable review - 8 stars out of 10 - from PopMatters.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/132 ... al-ransom/

ending with these words :
"33 years deep into his career, Elvis Costello continues to challenge both himself and his audience. If his latest is any indication he’ll continue inspiring us well into his twilight years."

[cwr]

That's a really positive review that seems to be written by someone with a decent awareness of Costello's career, but then there are statements like this one:

Having mastered nearly every genre of popular music save for hip-hop, Costello has been mindful about approaching each project with a specific genre in mind. National Ransom, however, marks perhaps the first time where the man has fearlessly dabbled in different genres under the same umbrella.

Ergh?? The first time he's dabbled with different genres on a single album? Try at least a half dozen albums since Trust that fit that description...

[Ypsilanti]

May I just please chime in to say...

I've listened to NR about 5 times now and the thing that's really hitting me is...the quality of Elvis' voice is just amazing. Holy crap!!!! Has he ever sounded better? From song to song he's totally on point and really selling the goods! And he brings so many of his different voices to the party--the unbearably sweet one, the sexy whisper-in-your-ear voice, the bleak sad one, the voice for noisy bar rooms, the ballsy one, the croony one. It's kind of blowing my mind, really.

[Miclewis]

I agree completely; Elvis' vocals are just amazing.

For me, one of the best examples of this is "Stations of the Cross". He has such a beautiful, incredibly flexible voice.

[Ypsilanti]

I agree completely; Elvis' vocals are just amazing.

For me, one of the best examples of this is "Stations of the Cross". He has such a beautiful, incredibly flexible voice.

Absolutely. Those higher-register harmonies totally kill.

And "You Hung The Moon" is, for me, almost beautiful beyond comprehension.

Likewise, "Bullets".

Jesus!

[Adam from Oz]

From today's The Age newspaper from Melbourne, Australia.

And now for something different
November 5, 2010

Every day he writes the songs: Elvis Costello has had a remarkably productive year.
Elvis Costello cherishes the freedom to explore diverse musical styles and themes. His latest album is influenced by the global financial crisis, writes Andrew Murfett.

THE way Declan Patrick MacManus sees it, 39 years into his career, the music business needs him more than he needs it. Yes, the man best known as Elvis Costello makes albums with extraordinary regularity - he this week released National Ransom, remarkably, his 33rd - but performing is what he deems his job.

''It's an ongoing process just to play,'' he says from New York, which, along with Vancouver, is where he spends his down time with his wife, jazz singer Diana Krall. (The two married in 2003; it is Costello's third marriage, and they have twin four-year-olds, Frank and Dexter.)

''My wife and I are both on the road a lot,'' he says. ''Vancouver is where we return to lie down between stints in work.''

Advertisement: Story continues below
Aside from the new album, 2010 has been an improbably productive year for the 56-year-old. He has performed regularly in Europe and North America in two divergent bands, the ''rock'' group the Imposters and the bluegrass-inspired Sugarcanes, with whom he is returning to Australia early next year. Not to mention touring with classical ensemble the Brodsky Quartet, orchestras and solo shows at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

''It's a really strong freedom I have,'' he says. ''The shows I did last November in Melbourne, say, at the Palais, I felt like I could go all over the place. I didn't worry if people remembered songs.''

Asked if he is concerned fans might not be satisfied with this, he blanches.

''I'm always leaning to the future in my sets,'' he says. ''It's contrary to what people imagine, which is me just coming out and playing the 'hits'. There has to be a reason to play it.''

With National Ransom being his 11th album in 10 years, the obvious question, then, is what motivates him to produce so much new music?

''I don't know how to answer that question,'' he says, warily. ''This is what I do. I went to Nashville a couple of years ago, with the intention of making an acoustic guitar record, and enlisting what became the Sugarcanes …''

The album's title is certainly provocative. The material often mines the global financial crisis, and Costello describes the ransom in question as both emotional and spiritual.

''There is a bunch of people holding themselves to ransom,'' he says. ''If you think about it for a moment, this whole economic system requires a lot of people to conspire. It's not just about the bad guys who got greedy. It's about all of us going, 'We want something we can't afford and don't care.'''

His tone suddenly grows incredulous. ''You know the orange I'm eating? I don't care what they paid the guy to pick it. In fact, you better go home to the country you came from, because we don't want you here anyway. And suddenly, you're dressed in red and black and you're killing people. It doesn't take very long to get to that desperation.''

While quick to assert that he is not predicting that the world is on the road to catastrophe, he adds that songs can give us a reason to have hope. ''Even when you sing about really sad, tragic or desperate things, if you let that out, it's no longer weighing you down.''

Asked to reflect on his career, in particular his first two incendiary albums from 1977-78, My Aim Is True and This Year's Model, he politely declines.

Still, his recollections around writing and recording arguably his best song, I Don't Want To Go to Chelsea, remain clear.

''I was working at an office and it came to me as a play that had been associated with fashion,'' he says.

''It was always something I had mixed feelings about. It was a feeling about the unease people have with being out of step at one time or another in their life. That's all. It was very easy.

''I wrote the song with the model of that stop-time riff like Can't Explain or Clash City Rockers and then got into the studio and the Attractions and started breaking down the rhythm a little bit and the next thing you know, you have that record. It was one of the best ensemble recordings from the early days.''

As for his legacy, don't expect him to be too sentimental.

''You could throw a rock in the air and hit a bunch of people that haven't heard my name and don't give a shit about any song I've written, much less feel that I'm defined by anything other than what I've said,'' he says, blithely.

''Every record I've released has been different and has found some sort of audience. I'm fine. The record industry is in a lot more trouble than I am. I can go out there and play. I don't need their help. They need mine.''

National Ransom is out now.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/ ... 17fyz.html

[cwr]

An AP interview:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadi ... Id=5042813

AP: Your album is filled with words that would send listeners to the dictionary — claxton, brazier, slattern, grenadine, farandoles, votive. Do you enjoy expanding the boundaries of what you'd see in typical popular songwriting?

Costello: Claxton? You don't know what a claxton is?

AP: You must be a mean Scrabble player.

Glad I'm not the only one who felt this way! It does seem like NR contains an unusual amount of words and references that are totally unfamiliar to me. Which is fun, because they are all really punchy and evocative and eventually I'll know what most of them mean...