The river in reverse

CD album.

Mycket gott skick. CD, Verve 0602498560570 (2006 / 2006). Vilket toppmöte! Engelske sångaren/låtskrivaren Elvis Costello och New Orleans-legenden Allen Toussaint. Det var orkanen Katrina som sammanförde dem och inspirerade till dett album. Katrina som ödelade stora delar av New Orleans och där befolkningen knappt fick något understöd från de federala myndigheterna. Costello och Toussaint har skrivit ett knippe nya låtar som behandlar Katrina-tragedin och de gör också nya versioner av dryga halvdussinet av Toussaints klassiska hits. Alla texter återfinns i medföljande häfte."It's impossible to consider The River in Reverse without taking the devastation Hurricane Katrina wreaked upon New Orleans into account. Indeed, it's quite likely that this collaboration between Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint would not even have occurred if it weren't for that cataclysmic event. They've collaborated before -- Toussaint wrote horn charts for Costello's 1989 album Spike -- but neither had plans to work together until they appeared together at several benefit concerts for the victims of Katrina in September of 2005. That kick-started the album that became The River in Reverse. Initially, the plan was for the collaboration to be a songbook album, with Costello and Toussaint performing some highlights from Allen's rich songbook, and while the record bears some remnants of that blueprint -- seven of its 13 songs were written by Toussaint in the '60s and '70s -- the finished work evolved into an elegant, eloquent protest album crafted out of old songs and new. Costello alone wrote the title track, premiering at a benefit concert at Town Hall that September, and its angry account of the flood that wrecked New Orleans provides a touchstone for the other five new songs here, all co-written with Toussaint. "Broken Promise Land," "Ascension Day," and "International Echo" explore the aftermath of Katrina, while "Six-Fingered Man" is a funny acerbic take on a sinful sloth who is "always the first to blow his horn/His achievements multiply/Pity half of them seem to be lies." Toussaint's presence on these five songs tempers but doesn't dilute the churning anger that roils underneath The River in Reverse: "Broken Promise Land" drives along on a swampy funk rhythm, the spare and laid-back "Ascension Day" is a showcase for Allen's piano, "International Echo" revives the rolling spirit of classic New Orleans R&B, while "Six Finger Man" has a grinding, gritty blues backbeat. All five of these new songs are genuine collaborations, bearing the unmistakable stamp of both highly distinctive musicians, but the best compliment that can be paid to them is that they blend seamlessly with the classic Toussaint songs that comprise the rest of the record. When placed next to explicit songs of protest like "Broken Promise Land," such New Orleans R&B and soul staples as "On Your Way Down," "Tears, Tears and More Tears," "Freedom for the Stallion," and especially "Who's Gonna Help Brother Get F