Elvis Costello has always adhered pretty closely to Ricky Nelson's “Garden Party” adage that “You can't please everyone/So you got to please yourself.” After all, this was a guy who, just a few years into a career as a critically-adored, hyper-literate rock bard, dropped a head-scratching album of country covers onto his unsuspecting fan base.

That was then; Costello's backers should long be used to his genre-hopping by now. Other than polka, I can't think of a style of music he hasn't taken a crack at in a career now spanning, believe it or not, almost three-and-a-half decades. The good news is that he's still churning out fine efforts with stunning regularity, and his latest, National Ransom, finds him in particularly sharp form.

When listening to someone who's been around as long as Costello, it's hard not to get carried away with checking for echoes of his past work. For example, the punchy title track on National Ransom musically harkens all the way back to “You Belong To Me,” from 1978's This Year's Model, with Steve Nieve's bright organ colors and Pete Thomas' stomping beat as prevalent as they were back then.

But Costello also adds the stinging lead guitar of Marc Ribot to join his longtime bandmates, and the result is something that mirrors the fury of the lyrics, which broadside the deceptive practices on Wall Street (“Woe betide all this hocus-pocus”). Nobody does indignant anger better than Elvis.

Lest you think that this is going to be a straightforward rock album though, Costello follows that up with “Jimmie Standing In The Rain,” which has a vaudevillian bent and features a Prohibition-style trumpet turn from Darrell Leonard. The theme of characters down on their luck, both financially and emotionally, continues throughout the album (“Forgotten man/Indifferent nation,” Costello sings on “Jimmie”), but it quickly becomes clear that the music used to express those themes is going to vary wildly.

Casual fans may at first be thrown by E.C. taking on torch songs (“You Hung The Moon” ) or Cole Porter elegance (“A Voice In The Dark”), but it's hard to argue with the adeptness of the results. Elsewhere, Costello utilizes his most recent band, The Sugarcanes, to assay material more steeped in country and bluegrass; he even gets Vince Gill to add harmonies on “Dr. Watson, I Presume.”

Nothing is off-limits, and everything is well-executed.

In one thrilling three-song stretch, Costello veers from the moody, jazz-folk of “One Bell Ringing,” which recalls “Almost Blue” in its lush melancholy, to the Brutal Youth-style bounce of “The Spell That You Cast,” to the tear-in-your-beer country balladry of “That's Not The Part Of Him You're Leaving.” Lesser artists would leave you with whiplash; the results here are seamless and stellar.

For my money, Costello has always been better served when he lets the songwriting dictate the course of an album, rather that the other way around. For example, last year's Secret, Profane, & Sugarcane felt hemmed in by its insistence on a Nashville sound; some of it was fine, but Costello's lyrics and melodies sounded as if they needed more room to roam. National Ransom more closely resembles the breadth and scope of '80s classics like Spike and King Of America. (It shares a producer, T-Bone Burnett, with the latter.)

The album's penultimate song, “All These Strangers,” is the standout in an album filled with gems. Although the Sugarcanes add some lovely touches, Costello is front and center on acoustic guitar, telling the tale of a globetrotting anti-hero right out of a John le Carre novel. Obsessive fans will get off on their polysyllabic hero's use of obscure words like “adamantine” and fingersmith, but the protagonist's lonely plight is universal, as he surveys his landscape, which is missing his lost love, and ponders, “Who are all these strangers?”

Anyone still looking for My Aim Is True need not apply here; Costello probably left behind those narrow minds behind long ago. Those who have followed him down every zig and zag of his mercurial career, and maybe even some who have just lost track, will find plenty to savor on National Ransom. After all, Elvis Costello is an artist brimming with unwavering integrity and impeccable taste.

When he pleases himself with his music, chances are he'll please a lot of people along the way.

National Ransom:

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"One Bell Ringing"

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"All These Strangers"

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