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Rating: Seeing them so different in the photos inside the booklet, the old gray-haired man seems just off a yacht. You wonder once more what could have driven two artists so different in nature, background, and target audience to collaborate, to write songs side by side, and to share with trust and generosity the secrets of their "haute cuisine." If we exclude commercial strategies, which the two certainly do not need, we might think of mutual respect, which, after all, had already brought them together three years earlier—not in person—to co-write a track for the soundtrack of the film "Grace Of My Heart," “God Give Me Strength”, also included in the closing of this album. However, I do not believe that mere admiration between the two can alone explain the formation of this "odd couple."
The chosen title "Painted From Memory" may give us clues and help clarify the strong but less apparent ties between them. To stay within the elegant metaphor chosen, we might say that both are great "painters", capable of representations with memories, recollections as the main subject. Not only that: what unites them is the way they illustrate them, that ability to add a touch of light even where darkness, pain, and suffering prevail; and, conversely, to insert insights of bitter reflection and subtle irony right when the phoenix of happiness seems to have, at least for a moment, spread its wings.
In the album, the two have, very flexibly, divided the tasks according to their aptitudes: Costello, also aided by his unmistakable sandpaper voice, inserts melancholic and biting notes into the sunny and airy melodies, among the best expressions of 20th-century "light" music by the American composer; Bacharach, for his part, tries to soften the more somber and dark tones, not allowing Elvis, as he is wont, to twist the knife in the wound. But the roles are not always adhered to: in the opening track, "In The Darkest Place", both contribute to tempering, to introducing softer hues, to changing the always dramatic tone of the end of a great love ( “In the darkest place / I'm lost / I have abandoned every hope / Maybe you'll understand I must / Shout out the light...") into a sublime elegy. In the end, what could make sharp pains, certain moments, certain twists of fate bearable if not working together with time, placing them in a more appropriate perspective, and memory with its "savvy touches," its artifices, those "brushstrokes" of which our duo are masters? This is how they manage to make too harsh realities acceptable, otherwise unhealable wounds ("In the darkest place / That is where you'll find me...").
Indeed, if there is a constant in these memory landscapes, it is that everything regains order, however precarious, a sense thanks to this play of colors, to this vital fiction. The suffering, like the joys, is filtered, worked until it becomes the matter of believable stories in which one can reflect.
From a musical standpoint, the partnership is perfect, even if the overwhelming personality of the old Burt takes over in the most successful episodes ("Toledo", "Such Unlikely Lovers", "The Sweetest Punch"), with his classic touch, with those measured and charming orchestral and vocal arrangements, unattainable models for generations of pop singers.
Moreover, by Costello's own admission, who shows modesty only equal to his skill, "...when the track takes off, Bacharach shifts into a gear I don't know."
Despite this acknowledged dominance, the whole work is marked by a wonderful balance, by strongly inspired episodes, by an extremely careful formal attention which, however, as is the custom of these two greats, never turns into artifice or aestheticism for its own sake.
Our memories are like frescoes and retain their fresh and intense colors only for a short period of time. Let us entrust them to capable and imaginative restorers like them, without asking if the final result corresponds to an original that no longer exists.
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