Ol' Declan Macmanus, BKA Elvis Costello, is back and looking to be hip again as he teams up with Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and his future The Tonight Show house band The Roots. There's seemingly nothing bad about this team-up, as only good may possibly come from mixing The Roots' brand of funky, soulful hip-hop and Costello's smoothly verbose approach to songwrting. The new album containing this single is entitled Wise Up Ghost and is coming to an auditory cortex near you on September 17.
"Walk Us Uptown" really is everything one could hope for from this collaboration. It's a catchy, upbeat tune about asking somebody to accompany you on a stroll through the city so that you can observe their masterful ability to wreak havoc. They were even cool enough to include a sample of that sweet Mac volume button noise in the beginning, but that still can't hide the fact that there's a noticeable absence of a soaring Captain Kirk guitar solo, the one thing keeping the track from being a knock out of the park.
Watch as Costello and ?uestlove sit down to listen to the new cut on an old school hand-crank record player. The lyrics in the form of periodical clippings tumble across the screen so that you can keep tabs on the original Napoleon Dynamite's skillful vocabulary. It's all courtesy of Pitchfork.tv.
I think we all owe thanks to Mr. Jimmy Fallon for accidentally making this possible. Be sure to look for this track as part of our New Music Wednesdays.
Here's the Wise Up Ghost tracklist:
1. Walk Us Uptown
2. Sugar
3. Refuse to be Saved
4. Wake Me Up
5. Tripwire
6. Stick Out Your Tongue
7. Come the Meantimes
8. Grenade
9. Cinco Minutos Con Vos
10. Viceroy’s Row
11. Wise Up Ghost
12. If I Could Believe
13. Can You Hear Me
14. My New Haunt
15. Puppet
