Elvis Costello has shared a new song called ‘Phonographic Memory’. Notably, it doesn’t appear in the tracklist for his upcoming album, Hey Clockface, but serves as the B-side to the previously released ‘We Are All Cowards Now’. Listen to it below.
As a press release notes, the spoken-word track “imagines a post-war ceremony involving an archive recording of the voice of Orson Welles and someone identified only as, “President Swift.’” It takes the form a short story set against the sound of an open-tuned acoustic guitar and will be available “due entirely to the miracle of digital download or streaming.”
Hey Clockface is out October 30 via Rounder Records. In addition to ‘We Are All Cowards Now’, Costello has also shared the album tracks ‘No Flag’ and ‘Hetty O’Hara Confidential’.
