Elvis Costello

Painted From Memory

Pour Something and Get Languid

Review Score:

(10/10)
Call it uncanny timing. The first time I heard this music was 2:00 in the morning shortly after my mother died. Bacharch and Costello were being featured on a cable (PBS or Bravo style) station in a dimly lit intimate concert. They reflected on how the album emerged. Bachrach played; Costello sang. Call it mid-night fatigue but I couldn't turn away. The conversation about their work together, the album and its emergence was genuinely interesting.

The songs are both alluring and lulling. Sometimes, they are painfully poignant, beautiful and wistful . I thought it was the context in which I first heard the songs, but having heard them over and over again, I do not believe so. There are lines and lyrics that pull you in because they have that "left-alone with my mistakes" kind of quality. There are also moments of wit (Toledo). The arrangements are muted elegance. And Costello's voice meets the sad soft plaintive quality of much of the music and its messages. I have heard it in a dark sad night,and I have heard it on sunny days when everything went right. It's still talking to me.

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