Painted from Memory Again
“PAINTED FROM MEMORY” REDUX: UNLIKELIEST OF COLLABORATORS -BURT BACHARACH AND ELVIS COSTELLO- SOON TO RELEASE A FOUR-BOX SET, INCLUDING 19 UNRELEASED RECORDINGS AND SONGS FROM THEIR SHELVED MUSICAL
If pressed to name the best and favorite album of the last 25 years, Painted from Memory, the fortuitous collaboration and clashing musical styles from two giants released in 1998 by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello might very well be at the top of my list.
Rarely has any album so perfectly captured the intrinsic essence of two such dissimilar composer-musicians. Fire and ice. Oil and water. Tears and joy. Bacharach and Costello.
Painted from Memory (Mercury Records) is an album packed from start to end with lavish orchestration, yet frequent subtlety, grounded in reflection and tethered to our most vulnerable emotional heartstrings. Its 17 songs are about love — and loss. Yet within each sonata and lyric is always a pleasant reminiscence of times gone by and a shining ray of hope for what might be better times ahead. No, we can’t ever go back again. What we’ve lost is now gone. But we hold onto those thoughts and memories and cherish them when we need them most because they provide us with comfort. We paint our own portraits from memory, sustaining us for the next hurdle of love and obstacle in life.
As splendid as that album was (and remains), the live rendition of Bacharach-Costello collaboration is even better. The unlikely duo performed a dozen songs from the album together live in front of a small in-studio audience for the PBS television program, “Sessions at West 54th.” This performance is absolutely flawless, unequivocally perfect. How Bacharach and Costello managed to pull off such a pristine experience with no previous live work together nor much rehearsal time is a marvel. It’s a display of raw talent by two masters at the very top of their craft.
We all assumed Painted from Memory and the live performance thereof was the final curtain. But come to find out, it was more of a sneak preview, with a longer and much more expansive sequel coming soon. That we’ve waited a quarter century for something we didn’t even know existed, makes the anticipation all the sweeter.
I rarely get excited anymore about the release of a new album. Such giddy anticipation seems like a rite of passage from so long ago, a distant memory of our teenage years when we couldn’t wait for our favorite band or singer to release a hot new album. Those were fun times, indeed, when the music mattered, and so many of those recordings became the soundtrack to our lives.
It’s just been announced that the duo is about to release The Songs of Bacharach and Costello, coming out 3 March 3. Reportedly, the new four-box set will feature all of the published songs these two musicians have written since they first started working together back in 1995. It also contains 19 previously unreleased recordings, including live performances, and songs written from some shelved musical projects, including a musical based on the movie character Austin Powers. The quirky comedy might seem unlikely as the subject of collaboration, but keep in mind many of Burt Bacharach’s 1960s classics were featured in Mike Meyers’ hit-smash comedy (and enjoyed a renaissance of discovery for a new generation of fans). One expects this to be interesting, at the very least.
But what many of us are really hoping for in The Songs of Bacharach and Costello will be more sounds and moments, like Painted From Memory.
As the composer of so many memories, Bacharach wrote, “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Yes, we will fall in love again. We shall fall in love over and over, again. With your music, that is.
Photo credit — 1998. Photo: William Claxton,
