eMusic Review 0
Elvis Costello and the Roots’ drummer/majordomo ?uestlove have a couple of big things in common: For one, they’re both the children of professional musicians. (?uest’s parents were in the Philly soul group Congress Alley; Costello’s father, Ross MacManus, sang with the Joe Loss Orchestra.) They’re also both gigantic record nerds, the kind of omnivorous music collectors who can go off on the minutiae of alternate pressings and mixes. ?uest has a legendarily mammoth record collection, from which he’s absorbed seemingly every groove anyone’s ever recorded. And Costello’s right up there with him in terms of obsessive music fandom: When he catalogued his 500 favorite albums for Vanity Fair in 2000, the list seemed like it could easily have gone on 10 times as long.
The new Costello/Roots collaboration Wise Up Ghost — mostly recorded in the Roots’ dressing room for their regular gig on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon — sounds like the product of a couple of intense music nerds cheerfully impressing each other, and it’s drenched in musical history. Costello’s always been a habitual quoter of and alluder to other people’s songs: From his very earliest recordings onward, his discography is strewn with small and large echoes of… read more »
