|
At first thought, an Elvis Costello country music album seems about as likely as Marie Osmond Sings the Greatest Hits of Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band.
It really isn't, though. Early in his career, Costello sang in English country bars. He frequently has nice things to say about George Jones and has recorded with that erratic genius, even writing "Stranger in the House" for the occasion.
But the album, Almost Love (Columbia) is disappointing. Costello, whose style as a rock musician is minimalist, here has burdened himself with the production talents of Billy Sherrill, who covers everything he touches with a kind of sonic goo. Instead of being a musician who cuts through all the extraneous garbage, as he's been doing on his prior albums, Costello ends up in it, up to his armpits. The justification for using Sherrill is probably that Sherrill is the producer for both Jones and Tammy Wynette, but he's not as right as Costello's usual producer, Nick Lowe, who's done some fine country records without a lot of fiddles and voices hacking away uselessly.
That's not to say that there aren't pleasures in the record. They come with the songs most resistant to Sherrill's "touch." Especially in two songs by Gram Parsons, who really defined the meeting place of rock and country music before his death, Costello shows what this album could have been. His vocals are crisp and subtle, not the aural taxidermy his treatment of Jones songs is.
Other high spots come when the Attractions get to cut loose through some rockabilly or Merle Haggard's "Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down," a song nobody could mess up, but the basic feeling is that something doesn't fit.
|
