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11.10.2018

AT THE WANG, ELVIS COSTELLO’S AIM REMAINS TRUE

The Boston Globe: Terence Cawley: November 11th 2018

It’s a conundrum classic rockers have faced for decades: how to balance the desire to play the new stuff you’re excited about with the need to give your fans the hits. If you’re Elvis Costello, who played the Boch Center Wang Theatre with his longtime backing band the Imposters Saturday night, you come to the same solution the likes of Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen have hit upon — just play for so long that no one could possibly leave unsatisfied.

Of the 26 songs Costello played during the 2 1/2-hour concert, 10 came from “Look Now,” his first album with the Imposters since 2008. At their best, songs like the snappy Carole King co-write “Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter” and the impassioned torch song “Suspect My Tears” combined the energy and hooks of his New Wave classics with the air of pre-rock sophistication he’s so deliberately cultivated in his later years. Costello would introduce these numbers with lengthy monologues, detailing in deliciously pulpy prose the sordid situations in which the showbiz types who populate the record found themselves.

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