Costello back with Imposters for new album

Elvis Costello’s first studio album in five years, Look Now, which also is his first new recording with his band the Imposters in a decade, is slated for release on Oct. 12.

The album includes a dozen songs, most written solely by Costello, but also featuring two he wrote with veteran composer Burt Bacharach and one in tandem with songwriter Carole King.

Bacharach makes a guest appearance at the piano on both of the songs he co-wrote, Don’t Look Now and Photographs Can Lie.

Costello is reunited with keyboardist Steve Nieve, drummer Pete Thomas and bassist Davey Faragher on the collection, which follows Costello’s most recent album, Wise Up Ghost, which featured the Roots and was released in 2013.

His last album with the Imposters was Momofuku in 2008.

In a statement, Costello said the new project grew out of his 2017 Imperial Bedroom & Other Chambers tour with the Imposters.

“I knew if we could make an album with the scope of Imperial Bedroom and some of the beauty and emotion of Painted From Memory, we would really have something,” Costello said.

Costello produced the album with Sebastian Krys, who won the Latin Grammy for producer of the year in 2007 and 2015.

The tracks were recorded in Hollywood, New York City and Vancouver.

A lyric video for the song Unwanted Number has been posted on YouTube and Vevo.

This month, the 63-year-old English singer and songwriter revealed he is battling cancer and cancelled several scheduled performances in Europe.

He said he had “a small, but very aggressive, cancerous malignancy.”

Costello has not, however, cancelled or postponed a month-long tour of North America that is scheduled to start on Nov. 2 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.