Elvis Costello’s thirty-first studio album, “Hey Clockface,” will be released this month. Recorded largely before the pandemic, it features an unusual combination of winds, cello, piano, and drums. David Remnick talks with Costello about the influence of his father’s career in jazz and about what it’s like to look back on his own early years. They also discuss “Fifty Songs for Fifty Days,” a new project leading up to the Presidential election—though Costello disputes that the songs are political. “I don’t have a manifesto and I don’t have a slogan,” he says. “I try to avoid the simplistic slogan nature of songs. I try to look for the angle that somebody else isn’t covering.” But he notes that “the things that we are so rightly enraged about, [that] we see as unjust . . . it’s all happened before. . . . I didn’t think I’d be talking with my thirteen-year-old son about a lynching. Those are the things I was hearing reported on the news at their age.” Costello spoke from outside his home in Vancouver, B.C., where a foghorn is audible in the background.This segment originally aired on October 16, 2020.
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The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When rock and roll emerged in the days of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, Elvis and the Beatles, no one thought about long careers, the way a musician's work might evolve over time. But that was then. Now there are careers that are 40, 50 years long. Elvis Costello has been on the scene since the mid-70s, a leader of the new wave.
But since then, he's led a vital and brilliant career of experiment and variation. And I've been following it all along.
Tell me, how does it feel in the hour of deception, in the moment of pretend?
Costello's newest album, Hey Clockface, is out this month, and it was largely recorded before the pandemic. I spoke with him as he sat outside his house near the harbor in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is why you might even hear a foghorn in the background. I wonder how you approach new music like that.
If you feel that a new album must have either a new sound, a new thematic approach, how do you approach that idea of a new record?
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