A lovely, understated exercise in minimalism,
Deep Dead Blue documents a set of otherwise unaccompanied guitar/vocal duets between
Bill Frisell and
Elvis Costello, recorded live at
the Meltdown Festival in London's
Queen Elizabeth Hall on June 25, 1995. Although the performance isn't even quite half an hour long, it's the perfect length for holding a listener's attention.
Frisell co-wrote the title track, one of the five songs bearing a
Costello credit; the others are underexposed items from
Costello's mid- to late-'80s catalog, plus selections by
Charles Mingus (
"Weird Nightmare") and
Lerner & Loewe (
"Gigi").
Costello is once again the refined, mature vocal stylist of
Painted from Memory, but
Frisell holds the real key to the collaboration with his impeccably restrained support. He expertly controls the dynamics of each piece, often stripping his part down to single-note lines, which lends surprising emotional impact when he allows full chords to wash over
Costello's voice; his articulation is crisp and clean, his chordal voicings often novel and unexpected. It's no real surprise that the two work well together, given the musical affinity demonstrated on
Frisell's masterful reinterpretations of
Painted from Memory material on his own album
The Sweetest Punch. The pleasures of
Deep Dead Blue are, to be sure, much subtler than either of those recordings, but they make an elegant and fascinating supplement. ~ Steve Huey