The Pitch: David Hudnall: July 1st, 2011
Down in front, a night’s convention of happily married couples chicken-danced to devilish and desperate songs about the hells of divorce and infidelity. “I Want You,” turned the stage lights blood red. In this trial-like song that throws a cheating heart and its victim through an incinerator, he wrenched and wailed some of his sickest lyrics three times over: Did you call his name out as he held you down? The irony was rich, jolly and irreproducible.
Then he sang the lines of the once-TV-banned “Radio, Radio.” I wanna bite the hand that feeds me / I wanna bite that hand so badly / I wanna make them wish they’d never seen me. In this bizarre world, Costello’s conquest of America turns the would-be gimmick of the Revolver Tour into a rising phoenix…