Elvis Costello Holds Audience to 'National Ransom'

Posted on Oct 29th 2010 4:29AM by Chris Mugan
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Elvis Costello wowed a select crowd on Thursday, Oct. 28 at London's legendary jazz venue, Ronnie Scott's, with songs from his current recording, 'National Ransom.'

Costello performed a solo lunchtime set to showcase the new album out this week in the UK (Nov. 2 in the US); and despite mainly accompanying himself on acoustic guitars, the veteran artist proved he was still full of vim and bile.

'National Ransom' is the Liverpudlian's most topical work in recent years, which Costello demonstrated by playing the searing title track, which references the financial industry collapse and bail out. More quietly seething was 'One Bell Rings,' his meditation on the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes at a London tube station.

In his trademark fedora hat, Costello also presented the sprawling album's lighter side with numbers that would not have been out of the place at the same city's Café De Paris in the '20s or '30s, most obviously 'My Lovely Jezebel.' In a garrulous mood, the bespectacled singer admitted much of 'National Ransom' was backward looking, "bringing back the good times and the bad."

He also explained the sprightly 'I Lost You' was written in one day while on tour with his band The Sugarcanes, because "we were playing honky tonks where we couldn't do ballads." Costello has been so lyrically fecund that, despite recording a 16-track album, there is enough material left over for an EP dubbed 'National Ransack' that accompanies purchases from his web site. From that, he played the urgent 'A Condemned Man' before tipping his hat and quickly leaving the stage as if his flight had been called.