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Elvis Costello and the Roots Get Funked in ‘Walk Us Uptown’ Video

Elvis Costello Roots Questlove wise up ghost

Elvis Costello and the Roots finally give us a taste of what to expect on their upcoming collaborative album. “Walk Us Uptown” is the first track on Wise Up Ghost, and its lyric video shows the original Napolean Dynamite and the inimitable ?uestlove hanging out in a dark lounge, throwing their record onto a vintage turntable before the words pop up over the vinyl. The song itself has a funky, icy groove, replete with a throwback organ sound and Costello singing like he did in his “Watching the Detectives” era. As Brother Question describes the album, “It’s a moody, brooding affair, cathartic rhythms and dissonant lullabies. I went stark and dark on the music, Elvis went HAM on some ole Ezra Pound shit.” Wise Up Ghost came about after Costello jammed with the band three separate times on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and is due September 17 from Blue Note.

Elvis Costello with the Roots, Wise Up Ghost track list:

1. “Walk Us Uptown”
2. “Sugar Don’t Work”
3. “Refuse to Be Saved”
4. “Tripwire”
5. “Stick Out Your Tongue”
6. “Come the Meantimes”
7. “Grenade”
8. “Cinco Minutos Con Vos”
9. “Viceroy’s Row”
10. “Wise Up Ghost”
11. “If I Could Believe”
12. “Can You Hear Me”
13. “My New Haunt”
14. “Puppet”