Get serious (continued)

There’s rhythmic variety and more harmonic possibilities than even Costello can explore in a standard three- or four-minute pop song, including passages for jazz drums (played by Peter Erskine of, among other bands, Weather Report) and jazz saxophone (John Harle). In an early scene, amid the argument between Lysander and Hermia, the orchestra slips into jazz swing for what Costello calls in his synopsis "a comic prediction of the enchantment to come" before moving on to the formality of a classical minuet for oboe and strings. As in his rock music, Costello enjoys creating characters. Theseus for one, speaks with a full brass-and-percussion John Williams voice. Bottom is Theseus’s bumptious inverse.

Because of details like these, it’s easy to enjoy Il Sogno moment by moment, especially if you’re reading along with Costello’s detailed synopsis. Sure, there’s that touch of The Simpsons and the John Williams moment or two. That dreamy harp against strings can remind you of Michael Corleone’s dark moments in Nino Rota’s score near the end of The Godfather, Part II. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Likewise for a noir-ish trumpet solo that could come right out of Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Chinatown. When the celesta begins to hint at Danny Elfman in Tim Burton land, Costello gives the harmonies or orchestration an unexpected turn. The score risks its most sentimental movie-music moment when the "Lovers Arise" near the end of the ballet. But more often, the darker moments of French Impressionism dominate. And the music becomes dense and thick with ear-catching activity — dissonant "storm"-like string glissandi. My only real complaint was that I couldn’t get that damned Bottom theme out of my head.

But this is a real score, "made by hand," as Thomson might say — Costello taught himself how to notate and refused suggestions by friends and colleagues that he use a computer, sticking with pencil and manuscript paper. No Danny Elfman short cuts for Elvis. Which probably also helps explain the attention to detail — there are no easy, paint-by-number orchestrations. Tilson Thomas, meanwhile, served as a de facto editor, challenging Costello’s choices, demanding that every moment "tell" without the benefit of dancers. And so it all works.

And yet . . . and yet, just for the hell of it, I threw on a disc by that most-maligned of crossover artists, Leonard Bernstein. It was an excerpt from Bernstein’s Facsimile: Choreographic Essay for Orchestra from 1946 (on the new Deutsche Grammophon Leonard Bernstein: An American Life), and there was more music in that 6:58 than in the whole of Il Sogno — more motivic development, more orchestral contrast, more musical events bar by bar.

A more damning comparison is provided by Costello’s own The Delivery Man (Lost Highway), which was released on the same day as Il Sogno. The context couldn’t be more different: Costello recording live with his rock band in the Sweet Tea studio in Oxford, Mississippi. From the first tentative chicken-scratch guitar licks against bass and drums and Elvis’s off-mike cry of "Go, go!", The Delivery Man crackles and burns. "Don’t want to talk/About the government," Elvis sings, "Don’t want to talk about some incident/Don’t want to talk about some p-p-p-p-peppermint gum." You could almost argue that "Button My Lip" isn’t much of a song — not much melody, it’s all rhythm and Elvis’s over-the-top vocal with a hint of a laugh, and pianist Steve Nieve showing his genius in his mix of staccato chords, out-there-harmonies, and dissonant Jerry Lee Lewis smashes at the top of the keyboard.

This is a roots record with a vengeance. "Country Darkness" is a slow Memphis groove in the tradition of Dan Penn, with a touch of pedal steel. "Either Side of the Same Town" is meant to — and does — echo soul singer Howard Tate’s work with songwriter/producer Jerry Ragovoy (who helped write the Costello tune). The title track is a Cajun country folk ballad with an expansive Elvis bridge (cued beautifully by Nieve). "Monkey to Man " is a New Orleans–style tribute to the 1954 swamp-pop single by Dave Bartholomew "The Monkey." "There’s a Story in Your Voice" is straight-ahead medium-tempo loud rock with dirty chords in one guitar and country twang in the other. The shocker comes in the second chorus when Lucinda Williams enters — the second character in a dialogue — sounding positively deranged. "Once you told me fairy tales," she sings, pronouncing it "tay-uhls" and giving the illusion of a third syllable in there somewhere.

Aside from Lucinda, Emmylou Harris has a couple of guest spots (one a lovely duet with Costello playing ukulele). The playing is stellar throughout, not just Nieve but also long-time drummer Pete Thomas, and bassist Davey Faragher, who provides melodic as well as harmonic and rhythmic heft, especially on "Bedlam." The latter is rich not only with theremin, melodica, and Wurlitzer piano (all by Nieve) but with biting politically tinged lyrics and a reminder that no one writes a better bitter rhyme than Costello.

Listening to Costello play great rock and roll, you might wonder why he’d want to do anything else. To which he has answered, ingenuously, in interviews, "Because I can." Because the opportunity is there. I believe him when he says he’s not trying to put on airs. Even so, it takes ambition, brass, and confidence to attempt a full-scale symphonic orchestration when you’ve just barely learned how to notate music.

But there’s a difference between "can" and "must" — that bit of urgency that even Bernstein’s most flaccid music has. Elvis’s more "highbrow" pop has been hit or miss. I enjoyed him taking a chance with Bill Frisell, cutting Deep Dead Blue live, singing Mingus, and letting the frays in that wonderful, expressive voice of his show. And his collaboration with Bacharach is pleasant pop created by two master craftsmen. His songs written with his wife, Diana Krall, for her last album have been dull, and The Juliet Letters is dour rather than witty. The Otter disc is appealing adult-contemporary.

But the problem with Elvis’s more "classical’ works isn’t that there’s nothing wrong with them. That is the problem. Thomson complained in his piece on Gershwin that the more respectable highbrow composers had been writing new operas and getting them produced at the Metropolitan for years. "Year after year they write them, perfectly real operas on perfectly good subjects. And yet nothing ever happens in them. No significant musical misdemeanor ever seems to have been perpetrated. Gershwin does not even know what an opera is; and yet Porgy and Bess is an opera, and it has power and vigor."

Thus far, Elvis Costello’s finest musical misdemeanors have been committed in pop songs. Long may they wave.