“I want you, I’m going to say it once again ’til I instill it / I am goin’, goin’ feel this way until you kill it.” Elvis Costello sang these relentless lines in 1986. He was younger then, and some of us were younger still. Yes, he sounded like a stalker, but for many of us that was our kind of fun. Costello, now 67, is presumably happily married (to chanteuse Diana Krall) and domesticated, but his muse still brims with bitterness and bile. And while he may have accepted an O.B.E. (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), his songs sound miles from Buckingham Palace.
On his new The Boy Named If (And Other Children’s Stories), 32 albums into the game, Costello explains the title: “If is a nickname for your imaginary friend; your secret self, the one who knows everything you deny, the one you blame for the shattered crockery and the hearts you break, even your own.” It is his most straightforward rock ’n’ roll album in a long time, maybe since This Year’s Model, which opened with “I don’t wanna kiss you, I don’t wanna touch / I don’t wanna see you ’cause I don’t miss you that much.” That was 1978, and he sounds like he’s not over it. If you have unfinished business with anyone, especially yourself, listening to the latest Elvis Costello is a way of checking in with your ex-lovers, ex-friends, abandoned self.
