11.04.2018
ELVIS COSTELLO BACK IN ACTION AND NEWLY IMPROVED IN ATLANTIC CITY
The Inquirer: Dan DeLuca: November 5th 2018
Back in July, when Elvis Costello announced the impending release of Look Now, the new album that’s his first in a decade with his longtime band, the Imposters, the British songwriter also shared more alarming news.He disclosed that he had recently had surgery to remove “a small but very aggressive cancerous malignancy.” And though the treatment was successful, he was forced to cancel a series of European shows because the recovery was taking longer than expected.
Costello stressed that he’d been exceedingly lucky that his cancer had been caught so early. “You should start playing the Lotto,” his doctor told him. But anxious fans who have been following him since as long ago as 1977 — when the bespectacled angry young man released My Aim Is True, one of the great debuts of all time — were nonetheless filled with “Oh, no, not Elvis Costello!” panic.
So Saturday night in Atlantic City, where Costello played the Etess Arena at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on the second night of the “Look Now and Then” tour, became a place for nerves to be calmed and sighs of relief to be exhaled.