Opinz

Elvis Costello – Secret, Profane & Sugarcane

Elvis Costello transitions through musical genres as well as David Bowie or Prince, and Secret, Profane & Sugarcane continues this trend, sounding little like his previous album Momofuku – T Bone Burnett’s production shines throughout the stripped down and countrified disc, and while it never gets tedious it can get tiring…there are a lot of fun and catchy tracks like “Down Among the Wines and Spirits”, “Complicated Shadows”, and “Hidden Shame” (originally written for Johnny Cash), but clunkers like “I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came”, “She Handed Me A Mirror” bog things down needlessly – Secret could have proven to people who don’t usually listen to bluegrass/country that it’s not all bad, but unfortunately it falls into some of the trappings that make people that otherwise love Costello’s other more eccentric work loathe country music.
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Tags: elvis costello, loretta lynn, t bone burnett

Various Artists – War Child Presents Heroes

War Child’s newest compilation – benefiting children affected by war – is structured around a premise that legendary artists pick modern day artists to cover their classics: Beck does a rousing, bluesy rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, Lily Allen does a soft and ironically sweet cover of The Clash’s “Paper Planes”-sampled “Straight to Hell”,  Hot Chip dance-pops up Joy Division’s “Transmission, and TV on the Radio manages to make the first good cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” that this reviewer has ever heard; despite a few low points, (The Kinks clearly picked The Kooks to cover “Victoria” because of the similar names, and the results are quite boring, and Peaches’ can’t hold a candle to the badassness of Iggy Pop’s “Search and Destroy”) the whole thing paints a more promising portrait of the state of popular music then you’re likely to get from most sources and besides, once again, it’s all for a good cause so you should buy it anyway.

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Tags: adam cohen, beck, blondie, bob dylan, brian wilson, bruce springsteen, compilations, david bowie, duffy, elbow, elvis costello, estelle, franz ferdinand, hot chip, iggy pop, joy division, leonard cohen, lily allen, paul mccartney, peaches, roxy music, rufus wainwright, scissor sisters, stevie wonder, the clash, the hold steady, the kinks, the kooks, the like, the ramones, the stooges, tv on the radio, u2, war child, yeah yeah yeahs

Fall Out Boy – Folie à Deux

It’s almost too easy to hate a band who writes songs about the “emo scene,” but here’s the thing: if you can listen to this record and take completely at face value, you’ll find it at the very least sonically interesting (for the most part) and at best a fun collection of (mostly) well-written songs that are better than most “pop punk” music out there; Fall Out Boy are easily dumped into the Blink-182-clone trash heap but are doing more on Folie à Deux to escape it than in the past, and the result is a more enjoyable album than they’ve ever made. More »

Tags: debbie harry, elvis costello, fall out boy, Lil Wayne

Elvis Costello and The Imposters – Momofuku

Elvis Costello and The Imposters – Momofuku

April 22, 2008
Lost Highway
Rating: 4.2 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: Loose and unselfconscious, Elvis Costello’s newest album is a true return to form, a parade of addictively catchy hooks and brilliant songwriting, with just enough diversity to keep it from feeling boring or dated.

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Tags: elvis costello, jenny lewis, momofuku, the imposters