Shelley Harland

The first Australian album from transient singer-songwriter and producer Shelley Harland is intriguing to say the least.

 

Red Leaf is unashamedly a ‘pop” album but in an era where “pop” has become even more of a dirty word this album is a statement that “pop music” need not mean Idol contestants warbling sickly imitations of disposable genres.

 

For those needing an easy entry point intro Shelley Harland’s music references like Aimee Mann and Natalie Merchant may be useful, but there’s little echoes of artists like Mazzy Starr (a less maudlin version thereof!) and Fleetwood Mac laced through these songs. She actually reminds me of the revered and long missing in action Syd Straw. You kinda get the feeling that if Anton Fier was casting for a Golden Palominos collective these days he would have found Shelley Harland.

 

Then you get a song like Friday which is just an irresistible cheery pop song that wouldn’t be out of place on a Sheena Easton album! And while that probably sounds like a back-handed compliment, the song is just so endearing that its hard to be too dismissive. It’s kinda like those early Frente singles.

 

Harland has commuted between London, New York and Sydney and has evolved as a largely self taught musician who has mastered everything from dance music to electronica to working with the likes of John Cale and a host of underground and not-so-underground dance and electronic luminaries.

 

She’s got an extraordinary voice – it’s a delicate as gossamer and as pure as the proverbial driven snow and yet she manages to inject appropriate doses of shade and light into these songs – on a song like Sorry there’s a pain in the voice that reveals a maturity that a pop poppet could not have summoned.

 

There’s a lot more to this artist than meets the eye and it’s no surprise to me that Elvis Costello has recruited her as the opening act for his Australian tour – readers of this site are the types that are probably going to see Costello so I’d recommend that you get there on time and catch the early part of the show.

 

Shelley Harland is probably capable of more challenging and risk-taking music that Red Leaf provides but this album finds her fighting the good fight to give 2009 pop music a good name. On songs like Panic To Control, Stranger, In The Dark and the title track she succeeds admirably.

Elvis Costello Solo Tour Announced

Elvis Costello is one of the great contemporary songwriters and thus seeing him in solo acoustic mode should be nothing less than a treat. That’s the format he has chosen for his up coming Australian tour.

Costello  has followed his musical curiosity in a career spanning more than three decades.  He is probably best known for his performances with The Attractions, The Imposters and his concert appearances with pianist Steve Nieve.

With a new album Secret, Profane and Sugarcane just released, produced by T Bone Burnett, during a three-day session at Nashville’s Sound Emporium Studio, comes the announcement that he will hit the road with an Australian tour in October this year.  This very special tour will feature Elvis, his guitars, his songs and his stories!

The tour begins at the Fremantle Arts Centre in West Australia on Thursday 8th October before heading to Victoria to play the Palais Theatre in Melbourne on Saturday 10th October, then onto Hobart for a show at Wrest Point Casino on Sunday 11th October. From there, Elvis heads north for his show at Canberra’s Royal Theatre on Wednesday 14th October. The tour then travel to Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on Thursday 15th October and finishes up in Brisbane on Sunday 18th October at the Convention Centre. Special guest support will be Shelley Harland who has just released her new album Red Leaf.  Now for anyone who hasn’t heard about Shelley Harland, heres a word of advice -  do not arrive late or linger in the foyer while this support act is on stage – Harland is a genuinely interesting new artist.

Having collaborated with Burt Bacharach,  Paul McCartney, The Brodsky Quartet, Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter and record producer/songwriter T Bone Burnett to name just a few, it’s little wonder Elvis Costello continues to  inspire and delight music fans around the world.

Costello has always been a favoured son in Australia having toured here many times since the late 70’s.  The last tour to these shores was as the main attraction for the Sydney Festival when he performed three very different shows with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, The Brodsky Quartet and Steve Nieve.

Boasting a back catalogue of over 40 albums including This Years Model, Imperial Bedroom, King Of America, All This Useless Beauty, The Delivery Man, North and Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, his Australian concerts will feature songs covering his entire career.

Costello’s songs have been recorded by a great number of artists – the list of performers reflects his interest in a wide range of musical styles: George Jones, Johnny Cash, Chet Baker, Roy Orbison, Aimee Mann, Dusty Springfield, Loretta Lynne and No Doubt.  He began a songwriting partnership with his wife, the jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall resulting in six songs included in her highly successful album The Girl In The Other Room. Grammy Award winner, Elvis has been awarded ASCAP’s prestigious Founder’s Award, inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame and nominated for an Oscar for the song The Scarlett Tide, co-written by T Bone Burnett, performed by Alison Krauss in the movie Cold Mountain.

Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe has made an enormous contribution to contemporary rock as an artist, songwriter and producer and he continues to be an active artist today, being one of many fine artists on the US label YepRoc.

That label is about to re-release Lowe’s first three albums as a limited edition box set. The collection of Dig My Mood, The Impossible Bird and The Convincer has been dubbed The Brentford Trilogy.

Nick Lowe began his musical career in 1965, when he co-founded the band Kippington Lodge, with Brinsley Schwarz. The band later became known as Brinsley. Lowe wrote some of his best-known compositions while a member of Brinsley Schwarz, including “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”, a hit for Elvis Costello in 1979, and “Cruel to Be Kind”, a solo hit for Lowe in 1980.

After leaving Brinsley Schwarz in the mid 1970s, Lowe began playing in Rockpile with Dave Edmunds. The label’s first EP was Lowe’s 1977 four-track release Bowi, apparently named in response to David Bowie’s contemporaneous LP Low.

Nick Lowe produced Elvis Costello’s first five albums, including My Aim Is True, This Year’s Model, and Armed Forces. He also produced The Damned’s first single, “New Rose“, considered the first English punk single, as well as the group’s debut album, Damned Damned Damned.

Because the two main singers in Rockpile had recording contracts with different record labels and managers, albums were always credited to either Lowe or Edmunds, so there is only one official Rockpile album. However, two of the pair’s most significant solo albums from the period – Lowe’s Labour of Lust and Edmunds’ Repeat When Necessary – were effectively Rockpile albums.

Lowe’s best-known song from this era is probably “I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock ‘n’ Roll)”.

In 1979, Lowe married country singer Carlene Carter, daughter of fellow country singers Carl Smith and June Carter Cash and stepdaughter of Johnny Cash. He adopted her daughter, Tiffany Anastasia Lowe. The marriage ended in the mid 1980s, but they remained friends, and Lowe remained close to the Carter/Cash family. He played and recorded with Johnny Cash, and Cash recorded several of Lowe’s songs. Lowe’s first son, Roy Lowe, was born in 2005.

After the demise of Rockpile, Lowe toured for a period with his band Noise To Go and later with The Cowboy Outfit, which also included the noted keyboard player Paul Carrack. Lowe was also a member of the short-lived mainly studio project Little Village with John Hiatt, Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner, who originally got together to record Hiatt’s 1987 album Bring the Family.

A New York Daily News article quoted Lowe as saying his greatest fear in recent years was “sticking with what you did when you were famous”. “I didn’t want to become one of those thinning-haired, jowly old geezers who still does the same shtick they did when they were young, slim and beautiful,” he said. “That’s revolting and rather tragic.” Rock critic Jim Farber observed: “Lowe’s recent albums, epitomized by the new At My Age, moved him out of the realms of ironic pop and animated rock and into the role of a worldly balladeer, specializing in grave vocals and graceful tunes. Lowe’s four most recent solo albums mine the wealth of American roots music, drawing on vintage country, soul and R&B to create an elegant mix of his own.”

In March 2009, he released a 49-track CD/DVD compilation of songs which spans his entire career. Proper Records released it in the UK and Europe. It is titled “Quiet Please… The New Best of Nick Lowe”

Elvis Costello’s TV Show

It’s not often that Australian television offers up anything of interest to fans of good music. Occasionally Ovation will provide something interesting and of course Rockwiz and Spicks & Specks do have their good moments. Music Max does the best with what it’s got but on the whole its not got a lot.
That’s what makes Elvis Costello With… such great news.
It’s  is a new music talk series hosted by Elvis Costello and each one hour episode will feature a big name guest:  Sir Elton John, Tony Bennett, Lou Reed, Bill Clinton and The Police. (Pick the odd man out in that list!)
Episode 1 features Elton John who talks about his relationship with Bernie Taupin and some of his influences including Leon Russell and Laura Nyro. It sounds like a serious chat.
There’s a performance element to the shows as well with each artist playing a new version of some of their songs and  Costello also playing, starting each episode with song that has some connection with the guest.
Elvis Costello With… kicks off  on ABC2 at 8:30pm Friday March 20th and will be repeated on ABC1 Thursday, March 26 at 11:30pm.

Elvis Costello Calling

The telephone interview (‘the phoner”) process tends to be rather regimented. You are allocated a time and you sit by the phone waiting for the call. Either the call comes through or it doesn’t. If it does you have 20 minutes to ask your questions and get off in time for the next interviewer to receive their call. If the call doesn’t come you wait for contact from a harassed publicist who conjures up an explanation and you hope for a re-arrangment.

Elvis Costello doesn’t work like that – or at least he didn’t back in 1991. Apparently his approach was to get a list of names and numbers of potential interviewers and then call who he wanted to when he wanted to. Whether the idea was to catch the interviewers unprepared or whether he simply liked to buck the system I’m not sure but I do recall vividly being in the InPress office on a deadline day and being told Elvis Costello was on the line.

Deadline would have to wait.

The interview went well enough in the circumstances and I later heard from the record company that I had passed whatever test he had in mind. Funnily enough the interview is now able to be found on Costello’s official website.

I found it and now I’m taking it back!

So here it is – from 1991 – the Elvis Costello interview I wasn’t expecting….

Elvis Costello has never been known for his predictability. A post-punk troubadour, personifying the ‘angry young man’ he has taken on many guises and pursued many styles of music. He’s dabbled in country, with his Almost Blue album, he’s conquered charts, whilst remaining somewhat left of centre, he’s written classics that will forever mark his place in the history of rock and yet he’s released albums that have left the critics scratching their heads.

Costello’s willfulness hence makes it no real surprise when totally unannounced he rang the InPress office on the eve of his latest Australian tour. ANDREW WATT was there to take the call.

Elvis Costello can’t even actually remember the number of times he’s been in Australia, but the frequency of his visits has done little to dimish the enthusiasm of the audience that awaits him. Part of the reason is that you never quite know what to expect from this chameleon-like artist. He’s been here in power-pop mode with The Attractions, in quirky country mode with T-Bone Burnett  and in roots rock mode with players like James Burton and Jim Keltner, known, if I remember correctly, as The Confederates.

Costello doesn’t really attempt to describe the nature of his current band, other than to say the show covers a broad area of his recorded work, with an original ‘band sound’ having been developed in the course of the current tour. This tendency towards changefulness is what maintains Costello’s enthusiasm for playing live.

“That’s my way of keeping it going and keeping it fresh, rather than doing the same thing over and over again. That would be boring for myself, so I can’t imagine why anyone in the audience would want to hear it. I much prefer coming out each time with something different.”

The great artists all through the ages have had their lifes body of work analysed, often retrospectively, in terms of ‘periods’. Whether it be Van Gogh or Bach, the artist of longevity and substance is more than likely to have identifiable stages to the work and Costello’s creative lifespan and unwillingness to stay in one spot seems to make him a candidate for such analysis. Is this the way he looks at his own career progress?

“Yeah, but some of the stuff is kind of personal and it’s not really relevant to anyone but yourself. It may not be really pertinent to the listener unless your own state of mind comes through on the material on the record which of course it does in some cases. But most of the time they are just records, and the songs are songs and they can be taken out of the context of the original records to see how well they might work in a concert. That’s where working with different bands can be interesting. There can be any number of variables, all of which makes it an exciting challenge to play each song.

“You can draw together songs from different albums that lead on one from another. You can play a song from the new record, and then a re-arrangement of a very old song so that people have to listen to it with fresh ears. That draws people into it. All of that helps create a bit of drama. There is an element of creating a bit of drama on stage, even if it’s only for the duration of that song, and then you can move on to another mood entirely, even if it’s something really light hearted.”

‘Light-hearted’ isn’t really a description closely or frequently associated with Elvis Costello. Yet throughout his work there is undeniably a sense of humour, albiet one that goes through stages of bitterness, sarcasm, absurdity and tongue in cheek. The perception of Costello though remains that of a ‘serious’ artist, which whilst a compliment does tend to pigeon hole him a bit too much.

“There is a sense of humour in there and it has been kind of missed in some cases. But there’s nothing much I can do about it. You can’t go around with a big sign, saying ‘this is funny’. But people do try to limit me by portraying me as this incredibly serious sort of earnest character. But I think there’s more to life than taht and I always felt that way early on. On the first records where you had this angry character, there was tenderness in some of the songs, and some humour. Maybe it was a little macabre or something. I think the humour on the new record Mighty Like A Rose is particularly macabre and maybe that’s why it doesn’t strike people as humour at all. A black comic moment to somebody may be so tragic to other people who don’t see any humour at all, or at least the humour doesn’t relieve them in any way.”

The analysis that automatically attaches itself to Costello’s work has inevitably meant that his relationship with critics has been a love/hate one. Once you achieve critical acclaim the music press immediately has a measuring stick against which to compare new work. Each new record is rated according to each critic’s view of what Costello’s best work is. And with so much variation in his approach such a premise becomes even less objective. True to form Mighty Like A Rose has received a mixed reaction, but the bottom line is that Costello doesn’t write for critics, or even for his tans but for himself, as an expression of where his interests lie at any particular time.

“My experience is that the people who are trying to praise this record are as likely to be wrong as the ones who say it’s the worst thing on the face of the earth. Most have been wrong in a lot of things. But the reason for that is that it is a difficult task to be perfect in your opinion about something, to be definitive and absolute. Music isn’t absolute in that sense.

“People who are paid to write reviews often lose sight of the fact that people’s response to music is so varied. Everybody listens to songs in a different way. So I find the relentless cynicism of particularly the British press really boring and terribly destructive to young people coming up in the business because they start to think that’s how they have got to act. I only can hope that people are a little bit more intelligent than to follow that kind of absolutism in music writing. Unfortunately some people tend to be glib rather than wise. But the same argument holds true even when people are praising you. Quite a lot of the time they miss the point.

“A lot of people’s fixation is whether I’ve maintained the level of emotional commitment or the intensity that’s perceived to be on the early records. Sometimes if the songs appear aggresive that’s enough for them. It’s never really considered why they should be aggresive, or if they are what they are aggresive about.”

Costello’s attitude carries over into his complete lack of interest in the marketing side of his music.

“It’s just not what I’m on about and never have been. I just want to be different from everybody else. Musically if they don’t like that then fuck ‘em, there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s the way I feel. Nobody else can sing for me. I sing my songs the way I choose to write them. I’m absolutely not interested in trying to conform to somebody else’s idea of me, even if it’s somebody who thinks they like me. I just don’t see anything creative or inspiring about repeating myself. They have to accept if they can’t get anything out of a particular album of mine then it’s not a disaster.”