Watch Elvis Costello's Sulfur to Sugarcane

The prolific and chameleon Elvis Costello is back with a new album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, this one all acoustic. 

It's worth a listen. His site is streaming some selections while we wait for the album to ship. 

Here's a video sample of the single Sulphur to Sugarcane, with some lyrics and commentary below the video:

Elvis's site is pretty cool. If you click on the album title, currently on the home page, you can read all the lyrics and get some background, and listen to every song on the upcoming, new album. Here are a couple of discussions and lyrics that interested me:

Complicated Shadows

Bravado Falters In The Eternal Chiaroscuro

Johnny Cash never did sing the last song I sent him. It was called, “Complicated Shadows” but he did cut “The Big Light” from “King Of America” and another song that I wrote especially written for him called, “Hidden Shame”.

I've recorded “Complicated Shadows” before, in 1996. I liked that version at the time but I've always been trying to get the song back to the way it felt when I first wrote it, without dreaming too much about how Johnny Cash might have done it.

The band is set up in a tight semi-circle at Sound Emporium. I've got my old Gibson J-50 for the rhythm. There are no drums in the room but we don't miss them. Mike Compton's mandolin is the backbeat and Dennis Crouch's bass, “the kick”, on most songs.

T Bone has come out of the production booth to play his Kay 161 – the only amplified instrument on the record but Jerry Douglas takes the solo on dobro. Stuart Duncan hangs back only to enter a just the right moment after the bridge. We cut “Complicated Shadows” in two takes.

These are the first songs written largely with acoustic instrumentation in mind since the 1986 album “King of America”, which was also produced by T Bone Burnett. He certainly knows were to put those microphones.

I've admired Jim Lauderdale's recordings for a good while. I especially like, “High Timberline”, the record he wrote with Robert Hunter.

Jim is singing close vocal harmony on every song this record. He's mastered that art of singing the second line without ever pulling attention from the narrator of the tale.

It's a real skill and a talent you hear a lot in bluegrass and in Johnny Paycheck's harmonies with George Jones, when he was in the Jones Boys. It was also how Don Rich sang with Buck Owens. It's transparent and essential at the same time.

I know Jim has listened to all that music and has obviously learned his lessons well. As a fine a singer and songwriter as he is on his own recordings, I can't say enough about the tone and timbre that he adds to mine on every line he hits.

Lyrics: 

Well, you know your time has come

and you're sorry for what you've done

You should've never have been playing with a gun

In those complicated shadows

Well there's a line that you must toe

And it'll soon be time to go

But it's darker than you know in those complicated shadows

All you gangsters and rude clowns

Who were shooting up the town

When you should have found someone to put the blame on

Though the fury's hot and hard

I still see that cold graveyard

There's a solitary stone thats got your name on

You don't have to take it from me

But I know what I spake

You think you're like iron and steel

But iron and steel will bend and break

In those complicated shadows Sometimes justice you will find

Is just dumb not colour-blind

And your poor shattered mind cant take it all in

All those phantoms and those shades

Should jump up on judgement day

And say to the almighty, "I'm still stinking of sin"

But the jury was dismissed

Took his neck and they give it a twist

So you see you wont be missed in those complicated shadows

You can say just what you like in a voice like a John Ford film

Take the law into your hands

You will soon get tired of killing

In those complicated shadows

Complicated shadows

Complicated shadows

Complicated shadows

Lyrics to the song in the video: 

Sulphur to Sugarcane

A New Song For The Old Campaign

It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane
'Cos everywhere I travel pretty girls call my name
I give ‘em as squeeze and they shoot me a wink
I buy their hot-headed husbands a long cool drink
You'd better come up smelling sweet 'cos you're a long time stinking
Then it's a little too late to complain
It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane
Now if you catch my eye and you find that it runs down your leg

It's like striking a match pretty hard upon a powder keg
They'll tell you from the borders to the waters in the Gulf
And if you take all the sugar you'll end up in the sulphur
And you'll burn in...
"Hello, baby I'm a pleased to meet you"
"I wouldn't do you wrong, honey"
"I wouldn't cheat you, honey'"
"When can I see you again?"
"Wrap you up in cellophane"
It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane...

It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane...
And your eyes fill up with brine
Because you're drowning in wine
It's like the last days of Rome
With the despots and divine
There's no place like home
For a little doll from China
It's a little too late to complain
It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane
You can go west to Texas

Go east to Mississippi
You can run out of money
You can run out of pity
Throw open your purse
Until you're crying for mercy
Go to Alabama
Escape Louisiana
I'm digging like a miner
North and South Carolina
And then if you continue

You will end up in Virginia
The woman in Poughkeepsie
Take their clothes off when they're tipsy
But in Albany, New York
They love the filthy way I talk
As they gargle with the finest champagne
When they can't get the grape or the grain
'Cos it's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane
If I could find a piano
Here in Bloomington, Indiana

I would play it with my toes
Until the girls all take their clothes off
Woman knock upon my door
In odd and even numbers
But none of them as wild as I discovered in Columbus
I gave up married women
'Cause I heard it was a sin
But now I'm back in Pittsburgh,
I might take them up again

Because they gargle with the finest champagne
When they can't get the grape or the grain
'Cos it's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane
Up in Syracuse
I was once falsely accused
But I'm not here to hurt you
I'mhere to steal your
Down in Bridgeport
The woman will kill you for sport
But inWorcester, Massachusetts

They just love my sauce
The woman in Poughkeepsie
Take their clothes off when they're tipsy
But I hear in Ypsilanti
They don't wear any panties...
Once they gargle with the finest champagne
They hitch up their skirts and exclaim
It's not very far, Sugar
It's not very far, Sugar

It's not very far from Sulphur to Sugarcane

“My friend and brother, T Bone Burnett, produced this record. He and I also wrote two of the songs together.”

“Sulphur To Sugarcane” takes its title from two Louisiana towns and is written in the voice of a charming but disreputable political campaigner. He is the kind of reprehensible fellow who glad-hands the women and gooses all the men.

While playing my solo spot on “The Bob Dylan Show” in November 2007, I started adding a couplet a night to the lyric, putting the name of each town visited into the narrative until I had a song that resembled, “I've Been Everywhere”.

It was startling to find how much applause one can receive for impugning the moral reputation of the ladies of Ypsilanti, even in Ypsilanti...

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Comments

[Sulphur Powder]

Really love it!