Elvis Costello Announces ‘Hey Clockface’ Album For October

Elvis Costello has announced the October 30th release of his latest album, Hey Clockface, according to Variety. The set, which is produced by Sebastian Krys, is the followup to Elvis Costello & The Imposters' 2019 Purse EP and 2018's Grammy Aarwd-winning Look Now album. The new set, which was recorded in Helsinki, Paris, and Manhattan, features collaborations with Attractions/Imposters keyboardist Steve Nieve, Michael Leonhart, Bill Frisell, and Nels Cline.

Costello said in the new album's announcement:

I wanted the record to be vivid, whether the songs demanded playing that was loud and jagged or intimate and beautiful. . . I sang live on the studio floor, directing from the vocal booth. We cut nine songs in two days. We spoke very little. Almost everything the musicians played was a spontaneous response to the song I was singing. I’d had a dream of recording in Paris like this, one day.

Although Elvis Costello is by far one of the most scholarly singer-songwriters when it comes to pop music in the 20th century, he understands that the actual art of songwriting is as big a mystery to him as it was to his heroes: “Music just starts to arrive in your head and at your fingertips and you don't have any choice but to — y'know, unless you're a real fool — to take it on, and try and work out what it is that is happening.”

The tracklisting to Elvis Costello's 2020 album, Hey Clockface is:

“Revolution #49”
“No Flag”
“They're Not Laughing At Me Now”
“Newspaper Pane”
“I Do (Zula's Song)”
“We Are All Cowards Now”
“Hey Clockface / How Can You Face Me?”
“The Whirlwind”
“Hetty O'Hara Confidential”
“The Last Confession Of Vivian Whip”
“What Is It That I Need That I Don't Already Have?”
“Radio Is Everything”
“I Can't Say Her Name”
“Byline”