It was all rock. No Burt Bacharach, no strings. It was fantastic. He toured with his piano player, the fabulous Steve Nieve, a few years back, just the two of them doing an acoustic set. Both of my brothers saw it and said it was amazing.
Sounds very good. I really liked his first few records!
Elvis Costello's early stuff is amazing, but he started getting weird in the mid-80's. Elvis Costello is probably one of the most talented musicians alive and he knows it, he purposely does all of the fancy stuff because he likes it and he doesn't care if the audience does or not.