Are Elvis Costello and Diana Krall ruining each other?

[johnfoyle]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102542/

The Undynamic Duo
Are Elvis Costello and Diana Krall ruining each other?
By Douglas Wolk
Posted Friday, June 18, 2004, at 12:22 PM PT


Elvis Costello used to be a victim of his own aspirations; now he's not the only one, I realized when I heard Diana Krall's new album, The Girl in the Other Room. It's the product of the Canadian singer/pianist's romance with Costello (the two were married late last year): Instead of the pre-rock ballad standards that she's sung almost exclusively until now, it includes covers of Costello's "Almost Blue" and songs by Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits, as well as five songs she co-wrote with Costello, featuring lyrics about "exchanging rings" and "a sparkling band." Krall's performances are mostly so genteel and slackly rendered that the album practically orders a glass of white wine the moment it starts playing. And her writing collaborations with her husband are disastrous concessions to his idioms and tics. They're not just Costello but bad Costello—syntax-torturing, proper-name-dropping rhymes ("We took the long way to get back/ Like driving over the Malahat") and cryptic wallowing ("I hope you never feel this much despair/ Or know the meaning of that empty chair"). A parody of late-period Costello probably couldn't have a much more dead-on title than "Abandoned Masquerade." What had gone wrong, I wondered?

Looking at a Costello news site for some kind of explanation, I realized that I'd forgotten about North, the eminently forgettable album of piano ballads he made last year, inspired by his romance with Krall. (Click here to read one Slate reviewer's more positive take on North.) The site also mentioned what Costello's been up to lately: He's been making a new album with the Imposters (the new lineup of his reliable rock band, the Attractions—good news) in Oxford, Miss., and Memphis, Tenn. (questionable news), potentially to be called South (red flag), which will be released simultaneously this fall with his new orchestral instrumental album, Il Sogno (bad news), which will in turn come with a bonus disk recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival (extremely bad news).

And then it hit me: Krall and Costello may have brought each other happiness as people. But they're a terrible influence on each other's careers.

Costello's great weakness is wanting to be seen as a serious artiste who's equally at home in high and low culture, north and south—the kind of cachet and flexibility that, one might suppose, comes automatically to people like Krall, who sing "All or Nothing at All" and "I'm Through With Love," but not so easily to the guy behind "Pump It Up" and "Oliver's Army." For the last decade or so, he's been flaunting the distance between his social-climbing collaborations (with the Brodsky Quartet, Anne Sofie von Otter, and so on) and his rock 'n' roll side. North is more or less his stab at making a sober, dignified Diana Krall album, except that all the material is his own; its back-cover credit says "Composed, Arranged and Conducted by Elvis Costello." (Disposable tunes are "written," serious works are "composed," see?)

The irony that Costello apparently doesn't notice is that when he waves this sort of high-culture/low-culture distinction around, he sells himself short as an artist. His early albums, recorded when he wasn't so concerned about who he was trying to impress, are not exactly lacking in cultural capital. And the genre-of-the-week projects he's been pumping out for the last decade or so don't have the same kind of staying power. Costello's set lists with the Imposters include, almost exclusively, two kinds of songs: brand new stuff and songs he wrote before 1987. (Even 2002's watch-me-play-rock album When I Was Cruel has been almost entirely banished from his live performances.)

Krall, in the meantime, has caught Costello-itis. She's a solid musician when her repertoire is the great American songbook as it stood 50 years ago, but perhaps spending lots of time around a singer who writes his own material has convinced her that it would be a good idea for her to do the same. The post-Beatles commonplace that songs are always somehow more meaningful or worthwhile when singers write their own material is simply untrue in her case. The best Krall performance on The Girl in the Other Room is her version of Arthur Herzog and Irene Kitchings' "I'm Pulling Through," which Billie Holiday recorded in 1940; the worst is its Krall-Costello companion piece "I'm Coming Through," an icky meander through self-help clichés ("The things we shared/ Have hurt us both so much sometimes/ We each go places love can't touch"). Krall's music for "Departure Bay," which nods to former Costello collaborator Burt Bacharach, is vague but evocative. The rest is just vague.

Becoming a singer/songwriter (and, perhaps, marrying a famous one) also seems to have led Krall to others whose performances she can't quite shake off. Her version of Mose Allison's "Stop This World" cops Allison's clipped, reserved delivery; her arrangement of Tom Waits' "Temptation" is a polite, almost entirely degritted imitation of Waits' own version. They're the sorts of songs that Costello could make his own without a second thought, but Krall is far better at sublimating her own voice to a song. Costello, on the other hand, naturally overpowers almost everything he sings, which is why his attempts to tone himself down for North seem so self-defeating. It's frustrating hearing the two of them try to prove themselves on one another's turf. What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding when it makes you try to step beyond your own limitations?


Douglas Wolk's book James Brown Live at the Apollo will be published in August 2004.

[selfmademug]

I really have no opinion on this topic-- it's far too early to talk about influences, no?-- but SLATE seems to have slagged Elvis consistently for years. I have no idea whether it's the same reviewer, or just the anti-intelligentsia-intelligentsia syndrome that tends to plague that publication in general...

[migdd]

My humble response. . .

. . .blah, blah, blah. . .

Just pretend these two had never met and listen to the music on its' own merits. "Writing about music. . . "

[clairequilty]

Doug is obviously a guy who likes to hear himself talk. Which is great cuz he obviously needs to afix himself to others to feel alive. I do the same thing with my copy of Penthouse every month.

But serious musical critiscm shouldn't intertwine itself with the artists' romantic endeavors. Except maybe Gwyneth and Chris, cuz she's hot!

[bobster]

"What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding when it makes you try to step beyond your own limitations?"

This, of course, is the key to this entire piece. Most music writers seem to truly hate it when artists attempt to climb out or whatever box they're in.

I think part of it is the not entirely unfounded belief that most experiments fail.

The other part of it is just kind of spiteful and pathetic and makes me really, really angry.

[clairequilty]

This guy must be alot smarter than me, cuz I don't know what the FUCK he's talking about.

[spooky girlfriend]

Let's face it - we all change a little bit according to who we live with or have a relationship with. Love can just change parts of you without you knowing about it or approving of it.

And as artists, they certainly have the freedom to allow those changed parts of themselves to be reflected in their musical careers. And if the public they send it out to don't care for it - they don't have to buy it.

Deep down, Elvis and Diana are people who found something special together and they're entitled to express it. And as an entertainment writer, this Doug person seems to have forgotten that people like Elvis and Diana give him information that provides him with a paycheck. Somehow Doug has deemed himself critic extraordinaire and attempted a bit of redneck humor by poking fun at the south again - as an area of the United States, and as the name of an Elvis album.

I'm not Diana's biggest fan, but let's face it guys - Elvis has found himself in the company of lesser women in his past.

[laughingcrow]

He now wears a cravatte a lot more...she obviously hankers for a man in a neckerchief, or has a contact at TieRack. EC smiles more too...but, he has just married a young virile blonde. So who can blame him!

Douglas Wolk, correlation doesnt always imply causation. Otherwise we might assume that as your hard hitting journalism is only being published on the Microsoft Network, that you're a shitty journo......then again?

[Copenhagen Fan]

1) Just as long as Diana doesn't ruin EC everything will be fine.

2) That journalist knows nada about EC. The first 3 albums are great, but who wants to hear that for the rest of their life??? I think that EC's changing styles are great, except for Juliet Letters.