SAN DIEGO — Is Elvis Costello, who performed Tuesday night at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, a musical alchemist? A subversive tightrope walker? An underachiever? An overachiever? A wry political commentator? Or an unlikely combination of all of the above?

No less pertinent, is Costello past his prime — as was painfully suggested by his very craggy opening songs, “Mystery Dance,” “Miracle Man” and “Watching The Detectives?” Or is this 70-year-old troubadour still able to strike aural gold? Happily, he did just that during his four concluding songs, “Pump It Up,” “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea,” “Radio, Radio” and the Nick Lowe-penned “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?”

These are key questions posed during Costello’s 22-song performance Tuesday with his superb, four-man band, The Imposters. The answers, much as at his similarly haphazard 2022 San Diego show at The Shell, are mostly affirmative.

If that seems like a contradiction, well, so is Costello, whose current “Radio Soul! The Early Songs of Elvis Costello” tour focuses on songs off the nine albums he made with his previous band, The Attractions, from 1977’s “My Aim Is True” to 1986’s “Blood & Chocolate.”

A 2003 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, he boasts one of the richest and most diverse songbooks in pop music history. He also has an unwavering determination to follow his muse anywhere it leads him, no matter how much doing so has alienated some fans who embraced his impassioned music in the late 1970s.

That determination is to his credit.

Costello is the only artist anywhere who has made full albums with Burt Bacharach, a string quartet, a jazz big band, the London Symphony Orchestra, New Orleans music legend Allen Toussaint, leading hip-hop group The Roots and Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. His tireless inquisitiveness and constant quest to explore new artistic vistas are all worth cheering.

Alas, Costello has — over the past decade or so — also become one of the most inconsistent performers in any idiom, at least when it comes to his increasingly strained and erratic singing voice.

That can make his wildly uneven concerts a sonic roller coaster of dizzying highs and wince-inducing lows. Accordingly, his Tuesday show at Humphreys hit both extremes.

For most of his first 10 songs, Costello’s singing was ragged and hoarse. Notes that once came easily eluded him altogether. His pitch wavered so much that he periodically sounded like a bleating barroom drunk.

Even when he recited the lyrics to “Watching The Detectives,” rather than sing them, Costello struggled to stay in key. Even so, he seemed engaged and bantered easily with the equally engaged audience. But his voice repeatedly let him down and did a major disservice to his exceptionally well-crafted songs, which on Tuesday included such rarely heard gems as “Clubland” and “Strict Time.”

Mercifully, nearly an hour into his performance, the musical alchemy began.

The turning point came with Costello’s 11th selection, “Deportee,” a stripped-down, reinvention of his 1984 song, “The Deportees Club,” performed anew in a low-key, semi-unplugged setting. Trading his electric guitar for an acoustic one, Costello still sounded raspy. But the roughness of his voice lent added pathos to “Deportees’ ” stark lyrics about ill-fated immigrants confronting harsh realities in the United States.

His singing improved markedly with the next four selections, which Costello also performed on acoustic guitar.

Perhaps because of the lower volume and his dogged perseverance, Costello suddenly found his voice on an ingenious mash-up of his 1978 song “Living In Paradise” and Van Morrison’s 1970 hit, “Domino.” The two were combined, he told the cheering audience, “to show you where I stole (‘Paradise’) from.”

Costello scored equally well with his understated, achingly slow version of “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes,” and a terrific, salsa-music-tinged take on “Clubland” (which deftly incorporated The Specials’ 1981 song, “Ghost Town”).

His impeccable band provided finely calibrated accompaniment, with Pete Thomas playing brushes on a small stand-up drum kit and Davey Faragher switching to an upright electric bass.

Keyboardist Steve Nieve — who, like Thomas, was a member of Costello’s first band of note, The Attractions — added dazzling piano and organ punctuations without ever detracting from the music at hand. Guitarist Charlie Sexton only soloed a few times, but made his presence felt when he did. His six-string played added depth and texture to songs that Costello had originally done with just one guitar, and the band played with an admirable combination of fire and finesse throughout.

Costello and The Imposters returned to full-on electric mode with “Everyday I Write The Book,” skillfully recast as a 1960s R&B song. Seven more songs followed, including “Wonder Woman” and the crowd-pleasing “Alison.”

Costello sometimes strained and sang a few bum notes. But he sounded largely revitalized, as he snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, transforming what began as a disappointing concert into an improbable triumph.

Although he never mentioned President Donald Trump by name, Costello made several biting references to him on stage. In one instance he did so, simply by invoking the titles of some of his vintage songs, most notably “Waiting for the End of the World,”

These sentiments were reinforced by the recordings that immediately preceded and followed the concert, Heaven 17’s 1981 song, “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang” and Mandy Miller’s perky 1956 song, “Nellie The Elephant” (with its refrain of “Off she went with a trumpety-trump/ Trump, trump, trump”).

©2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.