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Once, this Elvis was king. For the decade after his 1977 debut, Costello was the punk generation's unquestioned laureate, a prolific songwriter of matchless gifts who rode the dark currents of Thatcher and Reagan, fusing them with his own infidelities and secrets. Albums would ritually be dissected in mammoth two-part NME interviews. Even as his chart star faded, his greatness was unquestioned. The Grammy awarded to his latest album, Look Now, underlines his continuing status in the US. And yet in 21st-century Britain, that record was reviewed like a resurrection by a man who had slipped from sight.
Costello's complicated relationship with his homeland was smuggled into his 2004 song "Needle Time," which noted "the time I started to tire of those sour English." A 2002 V Festival appearance in front of what he termed "sullen little Thatcher's children" and a 2005 Glastonbury set of similarly mutual contempt sealed the alienation of a man who has lived in Ireland then Canada since 1989, and barely mentioned Britain in his work since 2002's When I Was Cruel. His touring returns to Blighty have been fonder in recent years though, even if his audiences aren't getting any younger, remaining stubbornly unreplenished by hip rediscovery. In Liverpool anyway, there is an unbreakable bond of understanding. Even if Declan MacManus was raised in West London more than Birkenhead, his emotional roots are Scouse.
The sticky-floored, faded red and bronze grandeur of the Olympia takes him from his usual seated, city-centre venues, towards the West Derby neighbourhood where he began as a musician, aged 16. Better known for cage fights these days, it was on his bus route to school. "I never did pluck up the courage to come inside," he confesses.
Much of the music that follows also finds its way back to the ferocious drive once guaranteed by the Attractions — renamed the Imposters since 2002, after bassist Bruce Thomas's excommunication. Here, in the old-fashioned clubland described by several songs from Trust that are aired tonight, the crowd are equally up for a deliberate, proper gig. It's in the way the Imposters smack into "Accidents Will Happen," Pete Thomas's ballroom rumble introducing "Mystery Dance," and Costello's guitar snarl on a rapturously received "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea." This isn't the perhaps over-compensating, youth-chasing fury of the Attractions' '90s comeback; the music is melancholy and knowing as much as thuggish and thunderous, and confidently sweeps up more recent songs such as "Flutter & Wow." Costello's voice, ravaged on his last aborted UK tour following a recent cancer operation, is fully restored, vaulting to bullseye soul falsetto targets.
There are softer moments, too. The words of "Shipbuilding" now need footnotes for those who don't remember the Falklands War, and the politics are left implicit as Costello grabs a vintage mic, slips his hand into his pocket and croons. The poignant freight floats up anyway: "Is it worth it?... it's all we're skilled in... with all the will in the world." It's become a simply beautiful ballad, carrying its past quietly.
When Elvis played Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall in 2013 after Margaret Thatcher's death following dementia, his blistering renunciation of her rule, "Tramp The Dirt Down," was quickly requested. He prefaced it by mentioning his dad Ross's 2011 death in Merseyside, having also suffered dementia — a fate, he reflected, "I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy, which I suppose Margaret Thatcher was." This elegant allowing of shared humanity between loved and loathed was moving enough. Now, sitting at the piano, he mentions that his mother, Lilian, is in the audience, having been nursed back from near-death two years ago. He pauses, holding himself together. "I can't tell you," he finally says, "what it means that she's here tonight." Then he sings his lachrymose country hit "Good Year For The Roses," shadowed by Steve Nieve's ghostly organ. There aren't many dry eyes.
Though Costello bridled at a term he coined himself, "emotional fascism" was his regular theme in his commercial pomp. But the change that has come over him with time can be heard in the slow, stately return to the Sam & Dave original of "I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down," soul poured back in as punk's pilled-up demons are flushed from the system. Declaring "they can't touch me now" during "From A Whisper To A Scream," both voice and arrangement gain a patina of regret and reflection. "Alison," meanwhile, has become hesitant and sad. If its jealous words can't be disarmed, sympathy is at least emphasised as he sings, "I can't stand to see you this way."
This is bracketed by a seething, clenched "Pump It Up" and "Oliver's Army," Costello's biggest hit grimly, eternally prescient. "Hong Kong is up for grabs," indeed, and the song's racist recruiters are plainly on the march. However, the line about "one more widow, one less white nigger" — already censored by classic-rock radio stations — is cut, its honorable potency perhaps too readily misinterpreted. Instead Costello spits a new verse, with phantom lines too quick to catch. Is he ranting about Enniskillen and the BBC? At any rate, the chorus remains both warning and football-chanted support to "the boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne."
The closing "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" is delivered with glowing Nashville warmth and a final squall of guitar. Singer and audience both leave grinning, and a word occurs that would never have applied to the paranoid swirls and punk snarls of old. This Elvis Costello gig has been lovely.
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