How long can someone continue to be an “angry young man”? Elvis Costello is now 71 years old, and certainly still giving it a go. It’s been nearly 50 years since the man born Declan MacManus tore onto the scene with My Aim is True (1977), as impeccable a debut album as they come. Then in his early twenties, Costello was a songwriter with a fully formed voice – wry, playful, caustic. Taking to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday, he exhumes a few of these tracks as part of a 26-song rollick through his glory days. It’s a marathon of a gig – but the lactic acid is a killer.
Costello starts with a murky rendition of “This Year’s Girl”, a slick, catchy number from his drum-tight second album This Year’s Model. He has a habit, like late-era Bob Dylan (or, increasingly, Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner), of singing a half-second off the beat, letting lyrics slide out of their familiar crevices. This, presumably, is a choice. But he’s also pitchy, his voice, once scissor-sharp, shows the unavoidable frays of time. It’s a particularly neutering problem because Costello’s intricate, idiosyncratic lyrics were always one of his great strengths. Here, they’re often difficult to discern. When Costello sits down at the piano, at least – to croon his way through the hauntedly jazzy “Almost Blue” – he manages to finally ballast his voice.
