I walked into a bar, Bret was standing there. He looked disinterested. I took some more cocaine. He didn't look any better. I had another vodka. The vodka didn't make me feel any happier, so I switched on MTV. I wanted to fuck Blaine, but Blaine didn't want to fuck me, so I called up Judy, she came over. She gave Blaine a blow job. I fell asleep. I woke up, I felt disinterested.

Not bad!

25 years later, Bret Easton Ellis imitates Elvis Costello Imitating Bret Easton Ellis in Rolling Stone:

Oh yeah, Bret comes up to me in a restaurant in Beverly Hills. His friend is drunk, he offers me a line, we go into the bathroom. Then Bret goes out and blows his friend. I watch, I'm bored. 

Also not bad!

Thus did Elvis Costello's hurtful words teach Bret Easton Ellis the power of language.

["Bret Easton Ellis in Australia", The Awl]

"It is going to be an incredible evening," said Mr. Weber, the event's emcee, rattling off the names of the many luminaries scheduled to make an appearance: "Costello, Warwick, Dash, Jackson, O’Hara, Pagano, Dorn, Hall..Burt!”

The theme of the evening: “What the World Needs now… Featuring The Music of Burt Bacharach.”

Mr. Weber put one of his hands in the side pocket of his well-fit suit, promising, “There isn’t going to be one dry eye or one empty seat in the house!”

Later, on stage, Mr. Weber would thank the Y "for turning me into the man I am today," adding, "You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”

Couples strolled arm-in-arm, sipping champagne, as they filed into a marble hallway filled with enormous white orchids, leading them into the vast performance hall.

Fredric Mack, president of the Y, thanked donors for being so generous, especially this year. "Giving is just not as easy now," he said. Mr. Mack and wife Tami Mack joined fellow gala chairs Helen and Bob Appel, Dana and Michael Goldstein, Lori and Marc Kasowitz, on stage to say a few words about the place's importance.

The crowd clapped and cheered as the singer Dionne Warwick took the stage, leaned against the piano and said, “It is a pleasure to be here. I flew in from Brazil this morning so you’re looking at a very tired women.” Ms. Warwick went on to perform "Walk On By” and "Anyone Who Had a Heart."

Mr. Weber later came out singing “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” spraying water on people in the first few rows and potentialy ruining all those fancy, freshly done Upper East Side hairdos.

Sarah Dash and John Pagano performed a duet; her bright gold dress glarefully shimmering upon the glittery stage.

Jill O’ Hara joined the Young Peoples Chorus of New York, receiving numerous applauds upon utterings the first few words of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.”

Elvis Costello sat in the last row, one hand on his lap, and the other massaging his forehead, as Cheyenne Jackson performed. When it came time for his own performance, Mr. Costello glided around the stage, covering Mr. Bacharach’s “God Gave Me Strength.”

Later, Mr. Costello offered a few thoughts about the heralded songwriter: “I can honestly say the music is beautiful and erotic, which is not something people usually call his music, but we’re all adults here, so I can say that.”

Mr. Bararach himself closed out the evening, slowly sitting down to a piano and launching into "Alfie," which brought on the longest applause of the night, and a standing ovation.

•    "Another Christmas Song" – Stephen Colbert
•    "Have I Got A Present For You" – Toby Keith
•    "Little Dealer Boy" – Stephen Colbert and Willie Nelson
•    "Hannukah" – Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart
•    "Nutmeg" – Stephen Colbert and John Legend
•    "Please Be Patient" – Feist
•    "There Are Much Worse Things to Believe In" – Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello
•    "(What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" – Stephen Colbert, Elvis Costello, Feist, Toby Keith, John Legend and Willie Nelson

The photos from the already-taped episode—one of Feist in an angel custom blowing Stephen a kiss, the other of Colbert and Costello at the piano (the former looking like Lawrence Welk, the later like Abe Lincoln)—are just priceless. And if Colbert’s track record with musical cameos is any indication, you’ll want to put a little rum in your eggnog when you sit down to watch this one. We can’t wait to see what they do with Mr. Keith.

The Zombies (file under hip '60s rock bands made popular anew by Wes Anderson movies and TV commercials) are playing Irving Plaza on July 11. The group will have just come off an extensive European stint with fellow British invaders the Yardbirds, though they only seem to have two U.S. dates lined up at the moment (the other is in Virginia). [On Sale: Friday, Feb. 15 at 10 a.m.]

'90s indie rock preservation alert: The Breeders are playing Webster Hall on June 10! Not as major as the Pixies reunion tour, but this is your chance to relive "Cannonball" in all of its Alternative Nation glory. [On Sale: Friday, Feb. 15 at noon]

March 18 will mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, and what better way to lament that depressing fact than with a benefit concert where trendy favorites for the 45 and over set (Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Lou Reed) will play alongside contemporary rock snob picks (Blonde Redhead, Antony, Moby). Tickets for the event, titled "Speak Up!" (that is, for peace in Iraq and justice at home), went on sale yesterday. The concert is at St. Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn. [On Sale Now]

The Police with Elvis Costello is the kind of the concert you could go to with your dad (or your kids!), so you can pick him up on the way down to Holmdel, N.J. on August 3 when both artists play the PNC Banks Arts Center (Sorry, no Manhattan date!). [Pre-sale Starts: Monday, Feb. 18 at 10 a.m.]

Also...

British Sea Power plays the Bowery Ballroom on May 10. [On Sale: Friday, Feb. 15 at noon]

The Long Blondes play the Bowery Ballroom on May 16. [On Sale: Monday, Feb. 18 at noon]

And Dirty On Purpose plays the Mercury Lounge on April 4. [On Sale: Friday, Feb. 15 at noon]

Mr. Costello wrote last century’s prickliest songs about hits and hip fashions­—like “Radio Radio” and “This Year’s Girl” on his coke-nosed second album—so it makes sense that he resisted Apple’s digital music behemoth for so long. (The Fab Four are still holding out.)

But his debut record, My Aim Is True, turns 30 this year (in fact, it will get its own anniversary release on CD in the fall), so it’s about time for a resurgence. Back in 1977, that album tore through its schlocky era’s sleaze with icy guitars and amphetamine melodies. The unshampooed Sex Pistols debuted the same year with their curled-lip royal insults, but Elvis paired his snarls with timeless, all-powerful pop hooks.

The McCartney-worthy “Alison” (“I don’t know if you’ve been loving some body, I only know it isn’t mine”) was his most contemptuous and lonely love song until the 1986 bad-marriage ballad “Indoor Fireworks”: “You were the spice of life,” he sang, “the gin in my vermouth.”

Except for a cornball album called Goodbye Cruel World, Mr. Costello’s bespectacled punk grew more worldly and varied in the 1980’s: Only one year after his 20-song R&B lovefest, Get Happy!!, came the honky-tonking Almost Blue, followed by the billion-instrument Imperial Bedroom.

Mr. Costello, who lives in Manhattan with his wife, Diana Krall (plus their new twins), will be celebrating his 11 digital albums on May 16 in Times Square’s Nokia Theater. And at the top of the month, he’s releasing two CD compilations, The First 10 Years and Rock and Roll Music. But who needs greatest hits when there are so many masterpieces at our fingertips?

My Aim Is True and other albums will be available on iTunes on May 1. Mr. Costello plays the Nokia Theater on May 16.

The prayer worked. Wearing a gold mini-dress and matching sling-back Christian Louboutin shoes, Patti then tore into the party tent, which we had constructed in the parking lot, and blew the lid off the Northpark mall with a spirited rendition of “New Attitude.” As mind-blowing as her performance was—at one point, she kicked her legs in the air and sent those spike heels flying across the stage—the most joyful God-given moment came when Patti summoned me back to her trailer for an après-show chat.

Though her Marmaladyship was attired in a black, floor-length velvet Donna Karan kimono lined in ivory silk charmeuse, she was far from ready to hit the hay. It was 11:30 p.m.—past my bedtime, but not hers.

“Darlin’, I’m ready to shop. Can you open the store for me?” she purred, referring to the brand-new 88,000-square-foot Barneys fashion palace scheduled to open to the public the next morning. “I’m a very busy girl, and I don’t have the time to go shoplifting.”

While the security staff banged on the lights and turned off the alarm system, Ms. LaBelle and I drove, in her stretch limo, the 14 yards from her trailer to the store entrance.

The next hour was like a dream. My colleagues and I sat mesmerized in the shoe salon and watched Ms. LaBelle—one of the great shoe connoisseurs of our age—try on, and critique, the styles of the season. Height was her primary concern: Though she loved the lace Alaia ballet flat, anything less than a four-inch heel was dismissed as “a baby’s shoe” or “a starter kit.”

As I watched Ms. LaBelle clunking across the carpet in this season’s massively orthopedic Balenciaga platforms, I realized that I was in the company of one of the most glamorous people in the world. She literally shimmers from top to toe—especially her legs, which have fewer veins than mine and were liberally anointed with a RéVive crème lustre ($375 at finer beauty counters), an unguent which gives the skin a metallic sheen.

Back in New York—and suffering from post-Patti depression—I resumed another prayer vigil. My entreaties concerned the speedy completion of the endless apartment renovation I have undertaken with my husband, Jonathan Adler. We are currently sequestered in our bedroom, while the rest of the rubble-strewn abode is inhabited by an army of workmen. We have dubbed our refuge “the Anne Frank suite.” Poor, beautiful, doomed Anne Frank has become one of those historical figures whose name we disrespectfully toss around like a Louboutin sling-back to signify something quite mundane. Living in cramped quarters? “Very Anne Frank, dahling!” Ditto Helen Keller. How many times a week do I use her name to verbally bludgeon those who have done something dopey where perceptual skills are called into question? If God grants me my wish and the reno wraps up soon, I vow to mend my ways and cease this dreadful practice.

More prayers: Last Tuesday night, during the Elton John AIDS Foundation dinner at the Waldorf, I found myself praying that Elvis Costello would stop singing. Though clearly a really nice bloke and undeniably talented, Mr. Costello and his oeuvre—all those hetero songs with girls’ names like Allison, Veronica, whatever!—have zero appeal for we members of the GLBT (gravy, lettuce, bacon and tomato) community.

Given the predominance of Judy Garland fans in the audience, Mr. Costello was an odd choice. (I guess Melissa Manchester was busy that night.) Ditto Neil Young, who followed Mr. Costello and sang and sang and sang. But guess what? Neil Young is so bizarre and talented and such a wacky poet that he was able to reel in the gays. The entire audience became transfixed by the painful melancholy of that whining voice. Nobody talked. You could have heard a David Yurman earring drop. By the time he did “Harvest Moon,” I was praying he’d never stop.

Regarding queens: When über-publicist Kathy Berlin called me to host a screening of The Queen at the Tribeca Screening Room last Monday, I assumed she was doing so in deference to my frequent and legendary impersonations of Her Majesty. Having cross-dressed as Queen Elizabeth II on no less than four occasions—and once being paid $50 to do so, I might add—I consider myself infinitely more qualified to play the role than La Mirren. On one of my Queen outings, many moons ago, I got horribly drunk and vomited into my white vinyl purse. Such hands-on experience, one would have thought, should at least have entitled me to an audition. But no.

Despite our intense rivalry, I pray that Dame Helen wins the Oscar—anything that draws attention to Her Majesty can only result in more look-alike bookings for me.

PS: Sir Elton “Candle in the Wind” John has added a real flamer to his Slatkin candle collection. Log onto bathandbodyworks.com and buy zillions of the new vanilla-and-coriander-flavored, flatulence-masking $16.50 Slatkin/Elton John “Fireside” candle; 10 percent of proceeds benefit the singer’s AIDS foundation. Burn, baby, burn!

The prayer worked. Wearing a gold mini-dress and matching sling-back Christian Louboutin shoes, Patti then tore into the party tent, which we had constructed in the parking lot, and blew the lid off the Northpark mall with a spirited rendition of “New Attitude.” As mind-blowing as her performance was—at one point, she kicked her legs in the air and sent those spike heels flying across the stage—the most joyful God-given moment came when Patti summoned me back to her trailer for an après-show chat.

Though her Marmaladyship was attired in a black, floor-length velvet Donna Karan kimono lined in ivory silk charmeuse, she was far from ready to hit the hay. It was 11:30 p.m.—past my bedtime, but not hers.

“Darlin’, I’m ready to shop. Can you open the store for me?” she purred, referring to the brand-new 88,000-square-foot Barneys fashion palace scheduled to open to the public the next morning. “I’m a very busy girl, and I don’t have the time to go shoplifting.”

While the security staff banged on the lights and turned off the alarm system, Ms. LaBelle and I drove, in her stretch limo, the 14 yards from her trailer to the store entrance.

The next hour was like a dream. My colleagues and I sat mesmerized in the shoe salon and watched Ms. LaBelle—one of the great shoe connoisseurs of our age—try on, and critique, the styles of the season. Height was her primary concern: Though she loved the lace Alaia ballet flat, anything less than a four-inch heel was dismissed as “a baby’s shoe” or “a starter kit.”

As I watched Ms. LaBelle clunking across the carpet in this season’s massively orthopedic Balenciaga platforms, I realized that I was in the company of one of the most glamorous people in the world. She literally shimmers from top to toe—especially her legs, which have fewer veins than mine and were liberally anointed with a RéVive crème lustre ($375 at finer beauty counters), an unguent which gives the skin a metallic sheen.

Back in New York—and suffering from post-Patti depression—I resumed another prayer vigil. My entreaties concerned the speedy completion of the endless apartment renovation I have undertaken with my husband, Jonathan Adler. We are currently sequestered in our bedroom, while the rest of the rubble-strewn abode is inhabited by an army of workmen. We have dubbed our refuge “the Anne Frank suite.” Poor, beautiful, doomed Anne Frank has become one of those historical figures whose name we disrespectfully toss around like a Louboutin sling-back to signify something quite mundane. Living in cramped quarters? “Very Anne Frank, dahling!” Ditto Helen Keller. How many times a week do I use her name to verbally bludgeon those who have done something dopey where perceptual skills are called into question? If God grants me my wish and the reno wraps up soon, I vow to mend my ways and cease this dreadful practice.

More prayers: Last Tuesday night, during the Elton John AIDS Foundation dinner at the Waldorf, I found myself praying that Elvis Costello would stop singing. Though clearly a really nice bloke and undeniably talented, Mr. Costello and his oeuvre—all those hetero songs with girls’ names like Allison, Veronica, whatever!—have zero appeal for we members of the GLBT (gravy, lettuce, bacon and tomato) community.

Given the predominance of Judy Garland fans in the audience, Mr. Costello was an odd choice. (I guess Melissa Manchester was busy that night.) Ditto Neil Young, who followed Mr. Costello and sang and sang and sang. But guess what? Neil Young is so bizarre and talented and such a wacky poet that he was able to reel in the gays. The entire audience became transfixed by the painful melancholy of that whining voice. Nobody talked. You could have heard a David Yurman earring drop. By the time he did “Harvest Moon,” I was praying he’d never stop.

Regarding queens: When über-publicist Kathy Berlin called me to host a screening of The Queen at the Tribeca Screening Room last Monday, I assumed she was doing so in deference to my frequent and legendary impersonations of Her Majesty. Having cross-dressed as Queen Elizabeth II on no less than four occasions—and once being paid $50 to do so, I might add—I consider myself infinitely more qualified to play the role than La Mirren. On one of my Queen outings, many moons ago, I got horribly drunk and vomited into my white vinyl purse. Such hands-on experience, one would have thought, should at least have entitled me to an audition. But no.

Despite our intense rivalry, I pray that Dame Helen wins the Oscar—anything that draws attention to Her Majesty can only result in more look-alike bookings for me.

PS: Sir Elton “Candle in the Wind” John has added a real flamer to his Slatkin candle collection. Log onto bathandbodyworks.com and buy zillions of the new vanilla-and-coriander-flavored, flatulence-masking $16.50 Slatkin/Elton John “Fireside” candle; 10 percent of proceeds benefit the singer’s AIDS foundation. Burn, baby, burn!

Stacey Kent's The Boy Next Door (Candid): Put on Ms. Kent's album and you'll understand why Clint Eastwood asked her to sing at his 70th birthday, and why Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro included one of her CD's among his "desert island" disc picks for Radio 4 in the U.K. With Ms. Kent's autumn-crisp voice, as with Messrs. Eastwood's and Ishiguro's work, the emotional fire lies beneath the surface and between the lines. And that's why Ms. Kent sounds like the future of a genre that too often is equated with the kind of over-emoting that makes Martin Short salivate. On The Boy Next Door , Ms. Kent-who hails from New York but makes her home in London, where she is a bona fide European star-takes a crack at songs made popular by some of her favorite male singers, including Perry Como's "Say It Isn't So," Nat King Cole's "'Tis Autumn," Chet Baker's "I Get Along Without You Very Well," James Taylor's "You've Got a Friend" and, with the title track, Frank Sinatra. As interpreted by Ms. Kent, whose voice manages to sound both young and worldly, and her excellent jazz band-Jim Tomlinson, saxophone; Colin Oxley, guitar; David Newton, keyboards; David Chamberlain, double bass; Matt Home, drums; and Curtis Schwartz, backing vocals-these well-worn tunes sound smartly modernized (save for "The Trolley Song," which has to do more with the song-it makes me think of Thomas the Tank Engine-than the singer). Duke Ellington and Paul Francis Webster's "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" is fantastic, though, and Ms. Kent imparts a contemporary cool to Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "What The World Needs Now Is Love" that thankfully has nothing to do with the 70's. Catch Ms. Kent at the Algonquin until Sept. 27.

MAKE SURE

You love Elvis Costello before you buy his new album, North (out Sept. 23 on Deutsche Grammophon). On paper, this CD sounded like it would be a must-have: After breaking up with his wife, former Pogue Cait O'Riordan, and hooking up with jazz singer Diana Krall, Mr. Costello heads to New York to record an album. Rebound periods like that are inevitably emotional thrill-park rides that, when converted to songs by artists as capable as Mr. Costello, tend to produce memorable work. (See Bruce Springsteen's Tunnel of Love , which contains the brilliant "Brilliant Disguise," a song that Mr. Costello has covered.) So, while I expected North to be dark and melancholy, I wish it wasn't so damn torporous. This time out, Mr. Costello avoids guitars for a spare piano sound with occasional orchestral and jazz flourishes, but the music often sounds like it was performed beneath the gravitational pressure of Jupiter, and Mr. Costello's lyrics are oddly formal, as if he was trying to write exactly like Porter or Gershwin did back in the day. When I heard Mr. Costello use the word "shan't" on "Let Me Tell You About Her," I half expected Conan O'Brien to pop up and trill a line or two in his tremulous Irish tenor.

North opens up a bit after repeated listens, but never entirely, and I can't help but think that Mr. Costello's choice to record here earlier this year is partially responsible. The album is essentially about ending one relationship and beginning another one, and all the sorting out that happens in between. (The clues it contains about Mr. Costello's love life are one reason that Costello freaks are sure to like this album more than the typical civilian.) But Mr. Costello came to a town that, two years after Sept. 11, is still going through a massive emotional passage, and I think he absorbed some of the staggering weight of that. So it's doubly heartening to hear the album's final song, "I'm In the Mood Again." "I walk the damp streets rather than slumber / Along the fine windows of shameless and plunder / But none of their riches could ever compare / I'm in the mood again," Mr. Costello sings, sounding as if both he and New York have been delivered from their pain.

SEE

The Pernice Brothers at Luxx in Williamsburg on Sept. 19. Earlier this summer, Stephen Metcalf wrote in The Observer that Joe Pernice, the leader of the band, "sings his perfect melodies in a gorgeous, feathers-off-a-lapwing voice that's been compared to Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, or Steve Martin of the Left Banke. With his M.F.A. in poetry and the shifty look of adjunct faculty, Mr. Pernice is the thinking man's Ryan Adams. His lyrics are one ravishing downer after another, about scratched Lotto tickets and faces smashed on steering columns." I couldn't put it any better. Prepare for the concert by buying their latest album, Yours, Mine & Ours (Ashmont), or Massachusetts , the 1996 album from Joe Pernice's earlier band, the Scud Mountain Boys. Luxx is at 256 Grand Street, between Driggs and Roebling. Phone: 718-599-1000.

On hearing that I was reviewing Mr. Costello's new record, When I Was Cruel (Island), a German friend of mine said, "I can't stand the way he sings! It's like he yodels." Yodeling is too extreme, but I know what my friend means. Mr. Costello's voice is a terraced hillside. Movement up or down proceeds by discernible steps rather than a seamless flow. There is a kind of flip or click in his voice as it moves between registers. It's a marriage of opposites, a delicate foghorn, a gruff flute. Which brings me to a story.

If you come late to Mr. Costello, it may develop that you are holding a baby in your arms. I certainly was, one ragged night in 1998. The setting is a pre–Civil War duplex in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It is 4 a.m. (The owner of the duplex, a Mr. Douglas Hardy, later kicked us out for having a baby, so I want to take this opportunity to send him my warmest wishes.)

In the dead of this early October night, the baby in my arms is crying. She has been doing so for the last six hours. Every night for the last 21 days. With the endurance of a Kenyan marathoner, she paces herself through the mountainous terrain of her nightly caterwauling. Behold the flared nostrils, the pumping fists! Like a bystander with a cup of water, my wife can only offer the breast. But the baby doesn't even pause as she takes it, and races on.

And so now, finally, with all hope of quieting her lost, the wailing newborn has been put into my care. I, who have no milk. In my arms, the furious infant screams and shakes. I might be swaddling a chainsaw. Millions of years of evolution have gone into this cry, human baby after human baby slouching, in infinitesimal increments, toward this blood-curdling shriek that will ensure parental protection and thus survival. The decorous mewlers, the considerate whiners, these have long been selected out of the human infant population. Now there are only the tympanum-bursting banshees, the Tasmanian devils with the breath control of a La Scala soprano.

No matter. I have a trick up my sleeve. Quickly, I carry the oscillating infant up the stairs to the boom box in the top-floor kitchen. Pressing the play button, I hold her innocent, apoplectic face right up to the speaker. In a moment, the voice of Mr. Costello flows mellifluously out-and the baby stops crying.

Only three things ever worked. The sound of a bathroom faucet on at full blast. The white noise of the vacuum cleaner. And Elvis Costello singing from "Painted from Memory."

There is something about Mr. Costello's singing voice that gets under people's skin. Pleasantly so, in many cases. But not always. And this, I suspect, is what lay behind my initial resistance to his so-called "yodel." I had to get used to the background hum, to the vacuum-cleanerish rumble behind even the most sweetly trilled of his literate, often opaque lyrics.

Mr. Costello may himself feel that his mellow hum has been getting too much air time of late. On his last two records, he's been teaming up with other artists-Burt Bacharach and Anne Sofie von Otter-and singing ballads. When I Was Cruel is the inevitable reaction to all that crooning. It's a return to origins, stripped-down and loaded with hard-charging rhythms that bring back the old New Wave.

By the artist's own count, this is his "first record in seven years." The absolutely breathtaking All This Useless Beauty came out in 1996, though, so I count six. Six or seven, for purist fans it has been a long wait, and they will find here a handful of gems. Mr. Costello was smart to call the record When I Was Cruel . The title song, which is listed as "When I Was Cruel No. 2" is the best on the record, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better song on any record released this year.

As a lyricist, Mr. Costello excels in avoiding clichés or turning them on their heads. His lyrics have an elevated, book-smart tone without ever being "poetic." At the opening of "When I Was Cruel No. 2," he says of wedding guests speaking about the groom, "Not quite aside, they snide, 'She's number four.'" Say what you want about "snide" being used as a verb, Mr. Costello gets his meaning across nimbly and economically here.

Other times, his avoidance of the commonplace merely leads him into obscurity. Most of Mr. Costello's lyrics sound fresh to the ear, but the more you think about them, the less they mean. For example, there's this from the up-tempo "15 Petals": "Mussolini highway / There's a frankincense tree / I picked some up there to carry with me."

When Mr. Costello hits a lyric right, he hits big, and that is the fortunate case with "When I Was Cruel No. 2." After the wedding ceremony, the oft-married groom looks at his new bride and makes the following observation: "She's starting to yawn / She looks like she was born to it / But it was so much easier / When I was cruel."

In a single line, Mr. Costello explodes the notion that people get toughened up by life and suggests the opposite: that age brings only increasing vulnerability as well as remorse and pity. You don't expect this, listening to the opening of the song, and it hits like a thunderclap. Meanwhile, Mr. Costello's singing carries the freight of this knowledge lightly and, as it were, beautifully. Few people write songs as good as this, at once tuneful and serious, gratifying and wise.

The collaboration with Mr. Bacharach, Painted from Memory , was suffused, as its title suggests, with a sense of the broken home and marriage abandoned. Part of getting back to basics on When I Was Cruel involves lightening up on the tragedy. And so we have songs such as "Spooky Girlfriend," as catchy and satisfying a tune as Mr. Costello has ever written, and "Episode of Blonde," in which Elvis sounds, possibly in a reference to Blonde on Blonde , like Dylan.

There are jokes on this record, too. On "Spooky Girlfriend," Mr. Costello sings: "She says, 'Are you looking up my skirt?' / And when you say 'No' / She says, 'Why not?'" And on "Episode of Blonde," he reminds us that "Every Elvis has his army / Every rattlesnake its charm."

Mr. Costello, who is 47 years old, recorded When I Was Cruel primarily in Dublin, aided by a "kid's beatbox with big orange buttons." If hanging out with Mr. Bacharach brought out his wistful side, being in Dublin makes Mr. Costello boyish again, a little cheeky and even reckless.

The title track is punctuated with a single-syllable sample-what sounds like "un" with a hard U-from "Un Baccio e Troppo Poco" by an Italian pop star called Mina. The horn section indulges in a touch of salsa on some songs. The teenager's beatbox pounds throughout others, and there's some noisy guitar and shouting on "15 Petals" and the rousing "Daddy Can I Turn This?" On the verge of 50, it's nice to feel 25 again, and you can hear this in the music.

Still, the "rowdy rhythms" Mr. Costello says he wanted for this record are not all that rowdy. There's a sense that he just wants to see how it feels again, like a dad taking a spin on his kid's skateboard. I don't mean this in the cutting way it sounds. Mr. Costello rocks perfectly well on this record; he hasn't lost anything. But he has always been running from his sweeter sound, as we all run from our best selves, because they seem too easy somehow.

With Mr. Costello, there is always some dullness, however. It's always him singing, always that voice . There's a sameness to it after awhile. But he's skilled at mixing up the play list. Mr. Costello's albums, more than most, leave a record of their passage in your mind. Very quickly in the silence between songs, you hear what's coming next.

The baby mentioned earlier is now 3 1¼ 2. When I played When I Was Cruel for the first time, she came running into the living room, shouting, "Nice CD, daddy!" I didn't tell her that she's been an Elvis Costello fan since she was 3 weeks old. But that's the way this review ends. No more colic. Nice new Elvis Costello record. And we don't live in Brooklyn anymore. We live in Europe, where landlords can't kick you out for having a kid that cries all day for Elvis.

Jeffrey Eugenides is the author of the novel The Virgin Suicides . His new novel, Middlesex , will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux this September.

Of course, the Icelandic individualist also revealed herself as an artist with considerably more talent than many in the room that night. It's that newly boundary-crossing talent-displayed in both her dramatically sweeping music and her painfully tender acting in Dancer in the Dark- that makes Vespertine (Elektra) her most accomplished album to date. As a singer, Björk trades on the weightless swoons and deeply rooted growls that can make a voice communicate as much as a full-body gesture. Entire narratives are bound in her vocal delivery, and there's a novel's worth of unarticulated emotion in the polar wind that blows through Vespertine .

True to her experimental past, Björk saves much of her storytelling for the music. Programmed with help from techno-semiologists Matmos, Herbert and Mendoza, the album's backing tracks crackle like signals on a short-wave radio, while strings swell to crescendo and avant-harpist Zeena Parkins picks melodies suited for an empty nave. The first single, "Hidden Place," throbs beneath a synth riff that corrodes like time-lapse footage of rusting steel before it reaches stirring heights. Despite its typically dense orchestration, Vespertine 's hymnal feel is quieter and more reserved than anything Björk's done. Past forays into jarring breakbeats and cartoonish exuberance have been replaced by glitchy ambiance and more measured release. Likewise, her singing swaps bombast for subtly arresting shadings. On "Cocoon," she pushes a whispered coo to its strained limits, her hushed scream conveying love's mix of ecstasy and anguish. Her vocal poetics also make an uncommonly animating match for verse borrowed from E.E. Cummings ("Sun in My Mouth") and Harmony Korine ("Harm of Will").

Like the last two Radiohead albums, Vespertine charts an unmapped zone between the alien world that surrounds us and the one that spins within. As the sound of data drizzle falls all around her, Björk knows when to raise an umbrella and when to just let wetness teach her what it is to be dry.

- Andy Battaglia

Elvis Costello: Dealing With Reissues

As with the other Elvis, fans of Elvis Costello split roughly into two camps: those who think he's alive and well, and those who believe he died decades ago (musically, at least).

While firmly in the former camp, I can't argue with anyone in the latter, who feel betrayed by Mr. Costello's abandonment of primal punk tunes for subtler, more complex songwriting with the likes of Burt Bacharach and the Brodsky Quartet.

Among Mr. Costello's most loyal fans are the staff of Rhino Records. When the rights to his back catalog recently reverted to him for a second time (in 1993, he reissued almost all his Columbia recordings on Rykodisc), he turned to the archivist label to reissue his entire oeuvre with bonus discs of outtakes and rarities, and trenchant liner notes from the man himself. They're arriving in batches, and the first set includes his best-sellers, 1977's debut My Aim Is True and 1989's Spike , and one of his worst-sellers, 1996's neglected All This Useless Beauty . (In the meantime, the rest are temporarily out of print.)

Greil Marcus recently wrote that his initial reaction to My Aim Is True was that it was a "hoax" perpetrated by producer Nick Lowe and singer Graham Parker, because Mr. Marcus couldn't "believe that anybody as geeky as the character on the jacket would have the nerve to appear in public." But at the time, that geek was a bracing hero, an animalistic yet intellectual antidote to the era's overblown art rock and California stylings.

There's not much that hasn't already been said about this landmark album, a tossed-off studio-band masterpiece. Of the newly revamped titles, it has the least new material-just four more tracks than the nine on the Rykodisc reissue (including the essential live version of Mr. Bacharach's "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself"), so even diehards may balk at purchasing the title for a third time. But the other two are wise choices to highlight, among the strongest records of his middle and later career. Both are worth a second (or first) listen, and the supplementary material makes even stronger cases for them.

Spike was overproduced and dense, and lovely songs like "Veronica" got somewhat lost in the mix. As Mr. Costello cheerfully admits in the liner notes, the demos "may actually be more to some people's taste than the finished album." And long-lost B-sides like his cover of Nick Lowe's poppy "The Ugly Things" and Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good" with Marc Ribot on guitar are alone worth the price of admission.

All This Useless Beauty is a compendium of songs Mr. Costello wrote that were intended either for others (like Johnny Cash and Roger McGuinn) or with others (like Paul McCartney and Aimee Mann); as he notes, unlike his early efforts, "None of these lyrics contained any anger toward the characters, only disappointment that they had settled for so little. I could just as easily have been talking to myself. I was also drinking very large quantities of alcohol."

Despite this, he produced a brilliant, somber, grown-up post-punk album that holds up with his best work. The bonus tracks include fascinating strays that show his incredible range: a song recorded with Brian Eno, demos written with Mr. McCartney and Ms. Mann, a song with the ancient a cappella gospel group the Fairfield Four, and another remixed by trip-hopper Tricky.

That list says it all. Few artists of the last 25 years have had so many fruitful associations, influences and accomplishments. If Elvis Costello is a hoax, I'm happy to be his patsy.

- David Handelman

Varnaline: Alt. Country Livin'

That I'm reviewing Varnaline's latest album, Songs in a Northern Key (E-Squared Artemis), strikes me as a little odd. For back in the mid-90's, when Varnaline were just getting started, you couldn't have paid me enough to cover them. Why? First, I found their publicist at the time, shall we say, overly persistent. She called my office with alarming frequency to tell me that I had to do something on this band or I'd "miss the boat."

I'll admit that all that hustling got me to listen to Varnaline's '96 debut, Man of Sin . But that brought up the second, far more important problem: The music was sketchy, undistinguished folk-rock. I gave up.

Then, in early '99, I heard the group's third album, Sweet Life , and was pleasantly surprised by its rich, melancholy textures. Steve Earle must have liked them, too, for he signed Varnaline to his E-Squared label last year. It's a perfect fit, since much of Songs in a Northern Key suggests a grimmer version of Mr. Earle's recent album, Transcendental Blues . Singer-songwriter Anders Parker, the band's sole full-time member, crafts a brand of alt.country that leans way more on the alt, complete with chiming 12-string guitars, elegiac pump organ and gut-punch drums that sound like they were recorded in an elevator shaft. One track, "Let It All Come Down," could almost pass for grunge.

Yet even at this music's most raucous, its temperature remains low. As the album's title intimates, these songs have winter in their bones. The quietly aching "Blackbird Fields" and "Difference" inhabit a realm where the days are short and entropy rules; whatever hasn't already stopped functioning is about to. The closest Mr. Parker gets to humor is on "Broken Song," where he sings over a wistful trombone line: "I am a young man / Soon I'll be dead / If you were a rich girl / Well, maybe I'd live."

Mr. Parker's mopiness would be hard to take if it wasn't for the charm of his tender, uncertain baritone, as well as his skill at creating alluring moods. Just as the air seems clearest and freshest on a bitter January day, so the power of Mr. Parker's melodies is most evident when presented in a crisp atmosphere. Songs in a Northern Key makes a gorgeous case in point. I hereby apologize, both to Mr. Parker and to his former publicist, for my past errors, and advise all those curious about Varnaline not to miss the boat.

- Mac Randall

Chocolate Genius: Dark and Lovely

It takes balls to perform under the alias Chocolate Genius. What's more, Mr. Genius (a.k.a. Marc Anthony Thompson) titled his last album Black Music , as though he could define the sound of an entire race. Now he's back with godmusic (V2).

Mr. Thompson's cocky yet self-deprecating stage presence helps him pull off the genius part (stellar songcraft doesn't hurt, either). And 1998's Black Music proved a haunting, if depressing, collage of evocatively dark (read: black) lyrics-botched relationships, alcoholism, his mother's battle with Alzheimer's-with mournful grooves and glimmers of redemption. It also introduced a different kind of black performer: Rather than brown-sugar seduction, righteous anger or high-life glitz, the Brooklynite melds soul, folk-rock, blues, jazz and funk. And the result is as much Tom Waits as it is D'Angelo, Paul Westerberg as it is P. Diddy.

But godmusic ? C'mon. While the album finds Mr. Thompson in similar fine, wide-ranging form with slightly more uplifting material, it's hardly the sound of heavenly seraphim (not even funky Fort Greene seraphim). Mr. Thompson clearly worships the gods of rhythm and melody, but thankfully godmusic has no stake in Christian rock. In fact, organized religion gets a kiss-off in "The Eyes of the Lord": "There ain't no love / There's no joy / … No love in the name of the Lord."

Instead, godmusic 's finest moments-when the chords of the work-song-like verse of "Bossman Piss (in My Lemonade)" resolve into the major-key, tabla-driven chorus; when a burst of guitar fuzz makes the tragedy tangible in the elegiac "Planet Rock"-are religious in their epiphanic power.

Mr. Thompson's songs are tableaux-no surprise considering his Obie-winning theatrical background in sound design. He layers his weathered voice over a wash of artfully placed instruments, courtesy of local veterans like guitarist Marc Ribot and bassist Chris Wood, and the spare production respects their work. Frequent collaborator Oren Bloedow contributes a lovely horn chart to the Brian Wilson–esque falsetto "Infidel Blues."

But even the most divine prodigies can stray. "Pocket Mouse," a polemic about the hollowness of the American dream ("Spacious skies and power tools / Guns, crack, high school") is pedestrian, as Mr. Thompson himself admits in the liner notes. And the silly hidden track is a throwaway, which is especially unfortunate, since traveling through godmusic 's darkness and reaching the gospel-tinged rave-up of the title track leaves the listener on the threshold of transcendence.

- Ann Abel

Joy Division: More Unknown Pleasures

It sounds facile to say now, but in London during the late 70's-in the streets and on the airwaves, in the clubs and the record stores-it really felt as if punk had pushed the reset button. It was Year Zero of the new world order, and artistically there was a sense of infinite potential. Formed on a post–Sex Pistols concert high, Joy Division released their first single, a Wire-like asphyxiated punk thrash, in June 1978. Singer Ian Curtis persuaded the Factory label's founder to include it on the sampler that first brought them national media attention. In January of 1979, they recorded their first studio appearance for John Peel's hugely influential Sessions radio show, and Unknown Pleasures , their first album, came out in May of that year to widespread acclaim. Three wrenchingly beautiful singles-"Transmission," "Dead Souls" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart"-followed.

As the latter climbed the charts, Curtis, all of 24 years old, hanged himself on the eve of their first U.S. tour. In the days leading up to his death, he'd watched Werner Herzog's Stroszek (about a naïve musician who goes to the U.S. and ends up committing suicide) and had been listening to Iggy Pop's The Idiot over and over. There had been overdoses and cut wrists, a messy divorce, too much alcohol and worsening epileptic seizures, and what he'd been thinking was pretty clear in his lyrics. But his death still seemed to have come out of the blue. Closer , the band's second and final album, was released a couple of months later, and then, as with Nirvana, Biggie and Tupac, there were the tides of supplementary albums.

The four-disc set Heart and Soul: A Retrospective (Rhino) isn't blindly completist, but it represents Joy Division at their best. The first two discs are extended releases of Unknown Pleasures and Closer; the third a round-up of singles, alternates and rarities; and the fourth live recordings in chronological sequence. There are sessionographies and bibliographies, a typically lurching rant from Paul Morley, the strident semiotic text from the Sordide Sentimentale "Dead Souls" package and an essay from John Savage (who manages to repress the messy hyperbole typical of music writers covering Joy Division). Best of all, the glossy booklet includes Curtis' complete lyrics.

Musically a post-punk grafting of Northern Soul spirit onto a Velvet Underground heart, Joy Division's preoccupation was with texture and atmosphere. There was a democratization of instrumental roles: The melodies (such as they were) came through in the midrange, carried on Peter Hook's tight bass, filled out by Bernard Sumner with slurred chords and little echoey cascades of flanged guitar. The band really came into their own with the arrival of Martin Hannett, an obsessive studio fascist who was rumored to spend 12 hours getting the exact drum sound he wanted. Mr. Hannett's effect on Joy Division is highlighted in this compilation: The band retained its musical identity, but Mr. Hannett brought a dark sophistication, suffocating Stephen Morris' snare drum under gated reverb, bringing Mr. Hook forward and pulling Mr. Sumner back.

If the music was democratic, the singer was dictatorial. In concert, Curtis was the focus of the band-indeed, Mr. Hook and Mr. Sumner often played with their backs to the audience, hunched over in the gloom of Curtis' penumbra. He'd start off stiff, his body virtually twitching with nervous energy, and then gradually his arms would start to move, then flail, his movements becoming wilder until he seemed to be tearing open. His singing voice was more earnest than tuneful, his delivery more poetic than musical, his words urgent, despairing.

At their best, Joy Division had an intensity that I've rarely encountered since. Their influence has been widespread, from Nirvana to the Smashing Pumpkins, and will filter down second- and third-hand to younger groups for years to come. Heart and Soul will probably be bought mostly by those who were there at the time, but there's far more here than hollow nostalgia. Even 20 years later, after listening to these records, the day seems to turn a little wan, the sun dims a little.

- Jonathan Hayes