I haven’t heard Elvis Costello’s new disc, North (“…the only record I’ve ever made that aspired to beauty as the prime objective”) yet and I am less likely to want to after reading this Guardian profile. I am classing myself among those who fail to appreciate the genre-bending for which others lavish admiration upon Costello. Yes, he is delving into every style of music except that at which he excels. I can’t decide whether he has left me far behind or vice versa. No, cancel that; yes I can. Costello’s hauteur about his critics —

“The latest furore is such bollocks. The truth is that every single time I do something different there’s a small – and totally untalented – chorus of people who jump up and down and make a fuss about it: ‘He’s betrayed himself.’

Five years later, the same people are kissing my arse about the same piece of work. My view is that they should go straight to the last page and mail in their apology now.”

— has me decided. Oh, and not only are those who give a critical drubbing to North untalented but they are biased, he insists, by their resentment of his ending his marriage with Cait O’Riordan and embarking on a relationship with Diana Krall (hmmm, from the punk to the torch singer, how fitting). Then there’s the matter of the celebrated 1979 racist slurs about Ray Charles, for which his apology (if that is what it was) was entirely unconvincing.

I’m pretty sure that, if I dropped $18 on the new disc, my reaction would be along the lines of the critic cited in the Guardian article who opined, “… this soporific pseudo-Sondheim sucks.” It is a painful point when you realize that you won’t waste your money on an artist whose every new release you once awaited with uncritical bated breath. I should have learned my lesson, oh, around five years ago already. I got nothing from his Brodsky Quartet collaboration or his Burt Bacharach. Costello’s raucous attack music has given me endless joy, and my kids and I have the Rhino re-releases of his classic discs with all the bonus material loaded into the car audio system as the constant. pumped-up, buoyant soundtrack to long rides. With endless undiminished pleasure from his back catalogue, I don’t have to think about the long slow slide of another cultural icon under the weight of his own pomposity.