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My editor thinks Elvis Costello’s latest album, North, is a lot like Frank Sinatra’s 1954 classic In the Wee Small Hours. He’s right: both recordings are intimate explorations of emotional loss and the rush of new romance. On top of that, the string-backed piano ballads pack an immediate, visceral punch despite their spare instrumentation. When Costello calls, I mention the comparison. “That’s very flattering,” he says from the back of a limousine speeding along the Autobahn somewhere between Berlin and Hamburg. “Sinatra’s album is a masterpiece.” Then he brings up the Diana Krall factor: “People have made assumptions based on changes in my life that the appearance of quiet sounds,...

England was basking in an unseasonably warm and bright afternoon one play last week. Paul McCartney, however, was spending it enveloped by darkness and fog, as he had done for most of the preceding month. Yet the famous ex-Beatle’s mood could hardly have been sunnier. On Soundstage 6 at the Goldcrest Elstree Studio complex north of London, shrouded by dry ice, McCartney enthusiastically kicked into a performance of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” He was rehearsing for his most significant career move since the breakup of The Beatles in 1970. Buoyed by the critical success of his latest album, Flowers in the Dirt, and excited about the sound of his new band, McCartney is embarki...

Are Diana Krall and Elvis Costello morphing into each other? While Krall inches further into pop, her future hubby has plunged headlong into jazz. Costello’s latest album sees him working with saxman Lee Konitz, the Jazz Passengers and the Mingus Big Band (along with usual suspects Steve Nieve, Pete Thomas and classical cohorts the Brodsky Quartet). Piano ballads like “I’m in the Mood Again” and “When Green Eyes Turn Blue” are tailor-made for Ms. Krall and good chemistry for a marriage made in musical heaven.

Elvis Costello is a pop music encyclopedia, having written and recorded in many styles. One of Elvis’ favorite genres is country music. The legendary artist first ventured to Nashville in 1981 to record Almost Blue, which carried this label: “Warning – this album contains country & western music and may cause offence to narrow minded listeners.” One of his best recordings was 1986’s country-flavored King of America, produced by T-Bone Burnett, best known for the Oscar-winning soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Grammy-winning Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album Raising Sand, both of which popularized traditional country sounds. Now Elvis has teamed up again with T-Bone for ...

He’s got a new album coming this fall, but in the meantime fans will enjoy this 18-track collection that neatly summarizes two decades of Costello’s prolific output. Included are songs from Costello’s piano-ballad rich North, his Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted from Memory and his country flavored The Delivery Man, with guests Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris. There’s also some of his blistering, acerbic rock from When I Was Cruel and New Orleans magic from his elegiac The River in Reverse. Eclectic Elvis.