CD Review: Elvis Costello and The Roots

Elvis Costello's collaboration with Questlove's band the Roots is more trip-hop than hip-hop and less punk than funk, rating as one of his best-executed efforts of recent years.

 

• Elvis Costello and The Roots. Wise Up Ghost. Blue Note.
  4 stars (out of 5)

 

The band's darkly shaded grooves allow Costello to recapture something of the surliness of his younger days, and to reprise lyrics and samples from earlier works, with Questlove's snare drum spitting sharply throughout.

Refuse To Be Saved and Cinco Minutos Con Vos (with co-vocalist La Marisoul of La Santa Cecilia) top the upbeat numbers, while the 6/8 time Tripwire and closing ballad If I Could Believe are the pick of the mellow tracks.

Single download: Walk Us Uptown
For those who like: Soul, trip-hop, jazz-funk

- Jeff Harford