ELVIS COSTELLO & NICK LOWE ATTRACTED THEIR FANS AT THE BEACON

Elvis Costello and The Imposters are on the road this year on their ‘We’re All Going On A Summer Holiday’ tour, and they popped by the Beacon Theatre for a pair of shows of some classics and a lot of deep cuts, for which we caught the second of the two nights, and I felt the set turned out to be a very mixed back of fortunes. Despite persisting rumors that he intends to retire from the rock star life, especially after admitting in interviews that the lifestyle “just isn’t fun anymore,” Elvis Costello has actually been a virtual non-stop touring machine since the pandemic shutdown and recovering from a prostate cancer scare back in 2018, and he even just played an endurance-testing 10 night stand at NYC’s Gramercy Theatre back in February where he played almost every song in his impressive thirty some album catalogue. The one night I saw of that amazing run he had a surprising amount of gunpowder zest still in his frontman arsenal; however, at this show, he was sadly already showing some of the exhaustion one might expect from a rock god looking to take a bit of a nap. His voice faltered and cracked many times during his set, and he spent a considerable part of the show seated, even though he was visibly fidgety and looking to bounce around the stage like he used to, but instead he was getting winded and plopping back in his seat instead. Still, the show had some extra pep with the addition of a horn section, and that helped keep the show popping. Elvis burst onto the music scene back in 1977 with the album My Aim Is True that had classic songs like “Alison” and “Less Than Zero,” and that immediately established him as a powerful new voice in rock that mixed powerful punk energy, a neurotically uneasy New Wave zeal, and a blistering classic rock confidence to produce a very original and influential sound. I will say that the musical backing for this show was very killer and hit every moment with intense precision, which should not have been a surprise for serious fans, seeing as Elvis has re-grouped with his band The Imposters which includes keyboardist Steve Nieve and drummer Pete Thomas from his very first band The Attractions that he played with until the late 80’s, along with bass player Davey Faragher (of the band Cracker) who he has played with since the early 2000’s, and these already illustrious ranks were joined this time around by legendary guitarist Charlie Sexton known for his time playing with Bob Dylan as well as his own work with his Charlie Sexton Sextet.

Opening the show was another blast from the past for Costello fans, as the musician’s musician Nick Lowe was opening, and he was a rather successful singer/songwriter on his own, but he is also known as the genius producer behind Elvis’ first several albums. He was an amazing frontman throughout and swooned the audience with his quintessentially smooth harmonies and velvet voice with an incredible set of classics that has apparently changed nightly with the backing of the timelessly awesome swagger of the 80’s surf band Los Straitjackets supporting the master all dressed in their iconic Mexican wrestling masks and mariachi-flavored suits and blasting just the most excellent mixtures of spicy rhythms and tasty licks that did very much heat up his classically chill sound. He started with timeless solo tracks like “So It Goes” and deeper cuts like “Ragin’ Eyes” before he left the stage and there was a middle section where Los Straitjackets took over and played instrumental romps like The Ventures’ “Driving Guitars” and The Magnificent Seven Theme before Lowe resurfaced in a different suit and blasted some of his more well-known ear-candy pop hits like “Cruel to Be Kind” and finishing with a timeless track “When I Write the Book” that he even made mention of being the influence for Elvis’ big hit “Everyday I Write the Book.”

Nick Lowe

Elvis Costello did really try to spice up his set, perhaps even anticipating a bit of his health and energy slip, as he promoted the recent addition of a sax, trumpet, and trombone player for the last six shows of the tour, so we were gifted with a very different animal for this show, and it did result in a much more energized show overall. These new brass arrangements did indeed push classics and set staples into much punchier realms than they would normally rock and roll. He did switch up the setlist quite a bit form the previous night, as he is known to do, but I was surprised that he did not play many of his “hits” that many of his fans probably would have expected. It wasn’t until several songs in that he played his first big classic “Alison” with a little jam of Dee Dee Warwick’s “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” added, and he did pepper in other best of songs like his Sam & Dave cover of “I Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down,” as well as “High Fidelity,” “Shipbuilding,” “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” and “Pump It Up,” but I do feel that cuts like “Radio Radio” would have been pure fire with the horn section. Fans who may have loved deep cuts like his Burt Bacharach collaboration “Toledo” or his song with The Roots “Cinco Minutos” would have been amused, but I will say he needed more of the classics in his set. It may have made sense on his previously mentioned 10 night stand to play every odd deep cut in that crazy huge catalogue of his, but with this band and this crown he needed more. Still, when Nick Lowe stepped up to the mic at the end of the show to share a duet of “Peace, Love and Understanding,” as the closer, I will say all the unevenness of the night’s festivities were forgiven, and it made me wish Lowe was a permanent member of his backing band for the whole show, as that voice really is the perfect compliment to Elvis Costello.