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Secret, Profane And Sugarcane

Elvis Costello

Secret, Profane And Sugarcane

Largely acoustic album produced by T Bone Burnett and recorded in 3 days in Nashville

ADM rating[?]

6.0

Label
Hear Music
UK Release date
02/06/2009
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  1. 8.0 |   Uncut

    Costello manages to play along with Burnett’s in-soft/out-LOUD approach, making this his most engaging album in a very long time.
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  2. 8.0 |   Evening Standard

    There are many nods to the country-music establishment — songs originally composed for the late Johnny Cash, one co-written with Loretta Lynn — but this is essentially music of the moment
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  3. 8.0 |   Rolling Stone

    The music brings out the terser side of one of pop's most prolix lyricists, with some spectacular results: The closer, ""Changing Partners,"" is a waltz-time weeper so unfussy and timeless, you half-suspect Costello found it under a rock on an Appalachian hillside
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  4. 7.0 |   Spin

    Testifies to the merits of aging gracefully
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  5. 7.0 |   Independent on Sunday

    A dense, sometimes studiedly beautiful effort
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  6. 6.0 |   PopMatters

    Despite T-Bone Burnett’s warm production, some excellent playing by the best bluegrass players around, and a few keeper cuts, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane falls all too easily into the middle ranks of Elvis Costello’s vast discography
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  7. 6.0 |   Daily Telegraph

    This dalliance in fiddly, old-time country music almost feels like a return to base camp
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  8. 6.0 |   No Ripcord

    He could churn out this stuff like an assembly line, not really trying to surprise us or himself anymore. I don’t think that’s going to happen, since he rarely stays in the same place for more than 5 minutes
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  9. 4.0 |   The Quietus

    And so we come to the latest instalment of Elvis: The Coffee Table Years. Secret, Profane and Sugarcane is a soul album with little soul, a country album from a man from a different country. This is life-support machine music. For anyone hoping for one final hurrah of artistic integrity, you will find nothing here. Elvis, it seems, left the building a long time ago
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  10. 4.0 |   The Independent

    But it's a shoddy set of barrel-scrapings overall, lacking both focus and impetus
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  11. 3.8 |   Pitchfork

    This is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top. It's yet another entry in his string of gestural albums-- another argument that he's not ""just"" the rocker with a rock band whose rock songs still form the backbone of most of his live performances, both in their native idiom and out of it.
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Elvis Costello: Secret, Profane And Sugarcane

  • Download full album for just £8.49
  • 1. Down Among the Wines and Spirits £0.99
  • 2. Complicated Shadows £0.99
  • 3. I Felt the Chill Before the Winter Came £0.99
  • 4. My All Time Doll £0.99
  • 5. Hidden Shame £0.99
  • 6. She Handed Me a Mirror £0.99
  • 7. I Dreamed of My Old Lover £0.99
  • 8. How Deep Is the Red £0.99
  • 9. She Was No Good £0.99
  • 10. Sulphur to Sugarcane £0.99
  • 11. Red Cotton £0.99
  • 12. The Crooked Line £0.99
  • 13. Changing Partners £0.99
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