The Songs of Bacharach & Costello

エルヴィス・コステロが編纂した『The Songs of Bacharach & Costello』は、コステロがバート・バカラックと共に書いた公開済みの曲をすべてまとめたもので、30年間にわたる彼らの作詞作曲におけるパートナーシップを祝います。2CDセットのCD1は新しくリマスターされたアルバム『Painted From Memory 』、CD2 Taken From Lifeには「Painted From Memory」からの未発表曲と新たに録音された 3 つの楽曲を含む曲が収録されています。

Elvis Costello had been writing songs and performing them in public long before he became the most gifted Angry Young Man of the New Wave Class of 1977 with his debut album My Aim Is True. While plenty of punk and new wave acts espoused a Year Zero attitude about rock & roll, Costello obviously had a strong working knowledge of pop songwriting past and present, though it wouldnt be until he made 1981s Trust and 1982s Imperial Bedroom that he was willing to reveal just how firmly rooted he was in pop classicism. Years later, Costello and Burt Bacharach teamed up to write "God Give Me Strength" for Allison Anders 1996 film Grace of My Heart, a pairing that seemed like an amusing mismatch only to people who hadnt paid much attention to Costellos career since 1979s Armed Forces. The song was a brilliant evocation of Bacharachs sweetly melancholic tunes of the 60s, with lyrics from Costello that were thoughtful, mature, and fully worthy of the gravity and craft of Bacharachs melody. "God Give Me Strength" was good enough that Bacharach and Costello chose to write and record an album together, and 1998s Painted from Memory was a master class in pop songwriting for grown-ups, informed by Bacharachs salad days without betraying the least bit of nostalgia, and featuring some of the finest, most well-considered vocals Costello ever committed to tape. Bacharach and Costello extended the collaboration to pen a number of songs for a projected Broadway musical (conceived by, of all people, Chuck Lorre, the sitcom titan behind Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory), and The Songs of Bacharach & Costello is a box set that combines a remastered version of Painted from Memory with 16 performances of songs either written for the uncompleted musical Taken from Life or adapted from tunes on the album. The Taken from Life material is splendid and should please any fans of the collaborators, though the performances by Cassandra Wilson, Jenni Muldaur, Audra Mae, and others point out how specifically these songs seem to fit Costellos voice, and that they were crafted to suit a narrative that was never fully resolved. Rounding out the set is a collection of live performances of the Bacharach/Costello numbers and a final disc of Costello singing Bacharach/Hal David classics on-stage. The sizable majority of this has been previously released, but the material here has been packaged and presented with consummate care, and Costello penned a fascinating 10,000-word essay on his work with Bacharach for this release. As fate would have it, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello arrived less than a month after Bacharach died on February 9, 2023 at the age of 94. This collection wasnt intended to be a memorial, yet the deep dive into one of his last major collaborations pays worthy homage to his skill and dedication to craft, and every moment testifies to Costellos towering respect for the great man. ~ Mark Deming