The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello
UME
9/10
BACK in 1998 it might have been easy to see Elvis Costello’s collaboration with Burt Bacharach as one more step away from the skinny-tie, poison-pen new wave which made his name, part of a decade or more of cross-genre dalliances into classical music, soundtracks, and even ballet scores. But Bacharach was always in Elvis’s DNA. As early as 1977, he was setting his bar higher than his peers, trying to write songs with the complex, carnal craft and emotion of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” and covering “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”. Way back in 1963, as an amazing photo in this handsome new boxset reveals, his dad was singing with
