Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve, Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, MI, March 8, 2025
they call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie
Elvis Costello brought his current show, where he’s out only with Steve Nieve on keyboards, to Ann Arbor this past weekend. It’s just the two of them, but the stage was far more populated with microphones and equipment than you would have expected, and Elvis stalked the stage, moving from mic to mic, depending on what the song required, or what he wanted it to require.
When I saw him in 2023 out in the suburbs, he was already doing some of this to many of the songs, where he’ll play with a tape loop or reconstruct a melody because he thinks it’s interesting. Obviously, when it’s just the two of them, some of the material is going to be remixed and refashioned simply by necessity.
He’s been opening these shows with either “American Without Tears” or “The Deportees Club,” except that whatever genius is updating setlist.fm just writes the latter as “Deportee” and so I thought going into the evening that it was a cover of the Woody Guthrie song otherwise known as “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” In my defense, Elvis could absolutely kill that song, and he’d also played “Which Side Are You On?” at a previous show (at which he also opened with “Bullets For The New Born King”).
Saturday night in Ann Arbor, he walked out, sat on a stool at the edge of stage right, picked up a parlor guitar and his choice was “The Deportees Club,” telling us that it was about a man that came to America, “It could’ve been me,” but it wasn’t. He’s wearing gold boots with a decent heel and red socks and is nattily attired in a brown suit and a suitable hat and he wouldn’t be out of place in any bar in Nashville.
“When I Was Cruel” is a natural for this show because it already features a rhythm loop. Steve Nieve joins him onstage and is wearing a wool beanie and a camouflage jacket and picks up a melodica and gets to work. He’s one of my favorite keyboard players and it was a delight to be watching all of this from about the 11th row, stage right, straight on view of the piano. He had a grand piano and multiple other electronic keyboards on and in front of the piano and as Elvis would remind us at one point, they have been working together in one band or another for a very, very long time.
That’s what makes this kind of outing work well, because they each know how the other works, what to watch out for, what their habits are. I’m always interested to watch band leaders and although one guy on multiple keyboards isn’t a band, there is still a need to communicate effectively across a stage while loud music is being played. Elvis waved his arms, he’d stomp his boots on the ground.
Caryn Rose
Some of the material in the set was presented exactly as you’d expect it to be. “Shot With His Own Gun” is perfect in this environment. “Clubland” wasn’t that different melodically or energetically, but just stripped down, with a little mention of the Specials’ “Ghost Town” worked in for good measure. It was a good canvas for Nieve to excel and for Elvis’ voice to use the acoustics of the Michigan Theater to his advantage, soaring in that last verse. That’s the other aspect about doing a show like this; there is nowhere to hide, so you have to be prepared to deliver. Luckily that is rarely a problem for Declan McManus.
Before the song, Elvis told a story about his father taking him to the Hammersmith Palais one afternoon to give his mum a break, and how he’d settled him in the balcony with a packet of crisps and a Coke, “or as you’d say here, ‘chips and soda’.” (At least a third of the audience felt the need to try to tell him that it was pop, not soda.) He made a joke about Timothee Chalamet, tried to figure out what the local equivalent of Croydon would be before settling on Ypsilanti, which is not accurate but it is a hilarious name for a locality and I’d also try to work it into my stage patter if I was playing in the area.
The stripped-down “Watching the Detectives” reinforced its darkness, while “Almost Blue” was just plain gorgeous, again, another song where he’s taken it down to the bare minimum. I remember seeing him play it in the country set at the Palladium on New Year’s Eve in 1981. (I did not appreciate that set as much as I would now and am pretty sure I met a friend in the lobby [under the Neil Young painting] for a drink during part of it.)
The most astonishing moment of the night was a version of “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” which at the time reminded me of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” and I hand waved it away thinking it a ridiculous comparison but when I watched it again later, I’m not sure I was wrong:
The most surprising moment was when he picked up a new guitar, explained that it was a gift from the Imposters because it was like the kind of guitar Jimmy Reed played. He then proceeded to play “Take Out Some Insurance,” which was delightful but he’d set it up so we kind of knew something like that had to be coming, only to segue into a song I know the words of and am singing along to and it takes like 30 seconds for me to realize that he is now delivering a fine and faithful version of Dylan’s “Goodbye Jimmy Reed,” which is a thing I didn’t understand was not a usual part of this show until later (like tonight, sitting down to gather my thoughts for this. Tonight.)
The show ended with a segue from “Mystery Dance” into “April 5th” and then the song we all probably needed to hear – okay, at least I needed to hear it – “(What's So Funny Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” noisy and atonal, a version that I could imagine Neil Young offering. I was watching but I was also gathering my things and putting on my coat and it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, it's just that song is family by now. It is already part of my cellular construction at this point, I am still taking it all in. I have been seeing this man perform onstage for so long, I have been buying his records for what seems like forever, it isn’t obsession but I am never not interested in what he is doing and what he has to say or think or offer, but also, no matter what shape they're in or how they're presented, these songs are old friends, and it is always good to spend some time with them.
Caryn Rose
speaking of shows with reworked versions of old favorites
