07.05.2018
ELVIS COSTELLO & THE IMPOSTERS – THE PLAYHOUSE EDINBURGH
HiFi Pig: John Scott: 4th July 2018
Some nights are not to be forgotten. Like the first night I saw Elvis Costello and The Attractions here at The Playhouse, back in 1981, rattling through a setlist that included a mashup – way before anyone knew what a mashup was – of Watching The Detectives and Stevie Wonder’s Masterblaster and later a spine-tingling cover of Randy Crawford’s One Day I’ll fly Away. Or the two night residency on The Spectacular Spinning Songbook tour where the content of the evening’s entertainment fell to the fates of a wheel of fortune. Or the night in 1991 when seeing Elvis on his Mighty Like A Rose tour meant that I missed the first tiny steps of my first born son.
The ghosts of Elvis past are a hard act to live up to but as the lights go down and the Imposters launch into Wonder Woman, Costello’s collaboration with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint, my hopes are high. These days Costello has more than a score of albums to call on to form his on-stage repertoire but it’s a non-album track that’s up next, Girls Talk, his gift of a hit to Dave Edmunds, topped off tonight by a subtle tip of the hat to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.
A tightly wound King Horse driven by Pete Thomas’ rat-a-tat snare drum fills is followed by a soulfully reimagined Tears Before Bedtime with backing singers Kitten Kuroi and Briana Lee combining gospel/soul vocals and beat girl dance moves to great effect. Radio Radio swerves into (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea before Costello throws an unrehearsed – not that you’d know unless you were told – New Lace Sleeves into the setlist to commemorate, as we’re reliably informed by the man himself, Edinburgh being one of the first places where it was originally performed. And, all these years later, the line “Even presidents have newspaper lovers” seems more appropriate than ever.