The Coward Brothers [Bubblegum Pink 2 LP] [Barnes & Noble Exclusive] in Bloomington, MN

Sometimes a joke starts small and develops a life of its own, and to a certain degree that seems to be the case with
the Coward Brothers
. In 1984,
Elvis Costello
staged a solo acoustic tour of the United States, and
T-Bone Burnett
was tapped to open the shows.
Costello
and
Burnett
became fast friends, and they soon began playing their encores together, harmonizing on vintage country tunes and dubbing themselves
. In 1985, they cut a
Coward Brothers
single, and took to spinning an elaborate backstory for the characters of siblings
Henry
(
) and
Howard
), who boldly claimed to have written a remarkable number of classic country and blues classics traditionally credited to others.
Forty years after
' debut,
have taken the act out of mothballs for a combination podcast and radio play, scripted by
and directed by
Christopher Guest
, and
The Coward Brothers
is the duo's "debut" album, featuring 20 songs written for the podcast series (though "The People's Limousine," from the 1985 single, wasn't included). While
get co-star billing here, and
's touch is frequently audible, this plays more like an eccentric
project with production and occasional interjections from
than the fully collaborative effort one might have expected. The doomstruck spoken passages in "The Devil's Wife" and the mixed metaphors of baseball and global discord in "World Serious" are pure
, and they feel grave and introspective in a way most of the tunes are not, with many clearly playing for laughs. "My Baby Just Whistles (Here Come the Missiles)" plays like a distant cousin of "Please Mr. Kennedy," the faux-novelty song
helped create for the
Inside Llewyn Davis
soundtrack; "Yesteryear Is Near" is a venomous parody of "patriotic" British Music Hall numbers that would be ideal for Archie Rice; and "Early Shirley" is a playful early rock & roll knockoff that sounds like it took only slightly longer to write than to play, and is all the more enjoyable for it.
These songs were supposedly written by
the Cowards
over the space of many years, which accounts for the frequent stylistic shifts in the performances and production, but it's hard to imagine how the raucous aural chaos of "Birkenhead Girl" and the sweet, old-timey "Smoke Ring Angle" are intended to be part of the same narrative, let alone the same fictive repertoire. That said, there's a playfulness and spontaneity in this music that sets
apart from the increasingly mannered and ambitious approach of
's work from 2018's
Look Now
onward (and of
's
Invisible Light
series). It doesn't quite sound like a collaboration from two of the finest songwriters of their day, but maybe that's the point -- this is
having a good time throwing ideas at the wall, and a fortunate number of them happen to stick. ~ Mark Deming