Before we move into a review of this summer’s least-likely double-headlining showcase—blue-eyed-soul doyen Daryl Hall and pub rock’s most cosmopolitan sophisticate, Elvis Costello—it’s important to know that I’m grading on a curve.
Ninety-two-degree weather with pulsing, sweltering humidity underneath an amphitheater’s cover—even in the bucolic setting of the Mann Center—is surely akin to performing in a rubber envelope dipped in boiling water. Add that to the fact that hometown hero Hall is 77 and Costello is turning 70 next month, and any live performance has got to be difficult to execute. Prior to the Mann performance, Costello tweeted that several of his band members were indisposed, a story he re-configured into “fallen afoul of a bad piece of fish” in person. (Days prior to this, in neighboring Camden, N.J., 91-year-old Willie Nelson—freshly returned to the stage after calling out sick for weeks—had to sing in the density of a 100-degree heatwave in another amphitheater.) Playing in such thick, overpowering heat is a young man’s game.
If you’re over 65, take it inside, folks.
Costello and non-pescatarian/pianist/keyboardist Steve Nieve used the mother of invention as their live tour guide on this evening, and they turned in boldly spare and plucky takes on “Pump It Up,” “Talking In The Dark,” the always-dramatic “Shot With His Own Gun” and a spittle-spraying, Euro-centric “Accidents Will Happen” as if they had made a stop at Bobby Short’s Café Carlyle for the night. This brand of cabaret/not-cabaret seemingly occurred because Costello’s voice always (based on the last several years of EC shows I’ve attended) needs some warming up.
Yet, his gruff sing-speaking voice worked a treat on this opening salvo of catalog faves, as well as his more-recent “A Face In The Crowd,” the title track from his forever-in-the-works stage musical set to open in September in London. Having heard “Face” a handful of times now, I still haven’t warmed to its (non-)charms as a pop-concert selection. Here’s hoping it fits into the framework of his musical more majestically.
Better still, however, was Costello’s surprise cluster-funk rendition of “Come The Meantimes” with drummer Pete Thomas. That song was snagged from Costello’s collaborative album with Philly’s own the Roots, and it was among a handful of lovely (regular) set shake-ups, including a blowsy, bluesy cover of Mose Allison’s “Everybody’s Cryin’ Mercy,” a mean-edged “Waiting For The End Of The World” (with a hint of Van Morrison/Them’s “Gloria”) and a haunting version of “Clubland” teased and tickled by the Specials’ “Ghost Town.”
Consuming bad fish seems to have brought the best out of Elvis Costello and his Imposters.
As for Daryl Hall, the evening’s headliner (because double bill aside, someone’s got to open for someone else), his too was a smooth-yet-surly voice that needed a moment to warm to the night’s (barely there) air and his band’s thick groove. But once Hall got through holding on to his guitar for rough-and-salty renditions of solo songs such as “Dreamtime” and “Foolish Pride” (to say nothing of Hall & Oates hits such as the syncopated, soulful “Maneater,” “Rich Girl,” “Kiss On My List” and “Private Eyes”), he cozied up to his piano, got into “A Philly Mood” and happily stayed there for the rest of the night.
Any of us who love Hall witnessed his recent solo shows with Todd Rundgren as his support act and occasional harmonist, and we know that any renditions of H&O songs come at the price of missing Oates’ harmonic range. Now, if anyone could outpace Oates it would be Rundgren, and famously, Hall is the vocal king of swerving, full-boded soul and hook-laden, R&B-laced pop. When Hall tucked into the hotly ascending chords of “Everytime You Go Away” and “Sara Smile,” you could have felt your heart stop a beat as his voice lifted into the heavens.
The simplistic “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” became a complex, jazzy set of riffs on an evenly themed, lean melody. You could tell that Hall, the vocalist, wasn’t enjoying the dense, air-less heat, but that Hall, the soul man, was going to keep the dreamy show going into the moody-blue likes of “Can’t Say No To You” (from new album D) and odd finale “You Make My Dreams Come True.”
Hall has been definitely sticking with the same tried-and-true song selection on this tour. Which is fine. But for something even more liberationist from his one-time partner, here’s hoping that Hall dips into his past’s solo catalog (where’s Sacred Songs with Robert Fripp?) and the album tracks he wrote around-and-in-between the hit singles from his time with Oates.
I could go for that.
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Evan Albuck
