Album Review: Elvis Costello & The Imposters - Look Now

At 90 years of age, it’s wonderful to still hear Burt Bacharach adding lush lyrics and piano lines to his favourite collaborators’ new records. This includes his old chum Elvis Costello whose first album in five years opens with a gorgeously full-bodied woodwind parade in Under Lime. It’s a sumptuous repast of positive energies fuelled by a mercifully brief episode with cancer’s spectre. 

Costello himself sounds as smooth as he has on any of his recent albums and Look Now - while not as jagged as his late ‘70s classic albums or as intense as When I Was Cruel - has him comfortably telling stories with sophisticated craft. On Unwanted Number, he has fun feuding with a toxic lover and on Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter, he welcomes another legend, Carole King, to hold the pen with him (picking up a lyric sheet King allegedly started back in 1997). Nary a second nor space is wasted in these twelve songs, where the tender soul of Suspect My Tears sits prettily with the tale of a concerned father looking out for his promiscuous daughter (Photographs Can Lie) and Costello proves once again to be a most compelling songsmith.