Elvis Costello: National Ransom – review

Each song on Elvis Costello's sprawling new album, his 11th in 10 years and featuring some 30 musicians, is situated in a particular time and place – from Utopia, Kansas, in 1915 to present-day Wall Street. The specificity has a richly theatrical effect: in "Jimmie Standing in the Rain", we vividly feel the exhaustion of a failed music-hall singer getting drenched at a Lancashire train station. To criticise an overabundance of scenes and musical styles feels like quibbling with generosity, but there are misfires here, particularly the unwieldy title track, which could have been trimmed out.