Trying to stick a genre on Elvis Costello is a bit like herding cats.
Still, Secret, Profane And Sugarcane, on which the restless malcontent of British pop hooks up with old mucker T-Bone Burnett, is perhaps most neatly filed alongside Costello's 1981 album of country covers Almost Blue: it was recorded acoustically in Nashville with a stellar country line-up and features ten previously unrecorded songs plus two originally written for Johnny Cash (although Costello also sneaks in a few conceived for his unfinished opera on Hans Christian Andersen).
Costello effortlessly takes command of Burnett's spit-and-sawdust arrangements (accordion, dobro, double bass, mandolin) and moves between hoedown soul ("The Crooked Line"), red-raw regret ("She Was No Good") and backporch melancholy ("I Felt The Chill"). Not quite vintage Costello, but enough moments ("She Handed Me A Mirror") to confirm him as a rare talent still.
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