Listen to Elvis Costello’s raucous new song, No Flag

Elvis Costello has released a new song, entitled No Flag. Take a listen above.

The song sees Costello release more anger than usual, in what’s beginning to become a running theme of 2020. He sings: “No time for this kind of love / No flag waving high above / No sign for the dark place that I live / No God for the damn that I don’t give.”

Despite any entirely reasonable assumptions as to the song’s inspiration, it was actually written and recorded in February. He describes the studio in Finland where it was recorded as “a 20-minute ferry ride from downtown Helsinki … I wanted to go somewhere nobody knew me. So, this is ‘the Helsinki sound.’”

The song is his latest release since his Grammy-winning album from 2018, Look Now. Costello also took part in a charity live stream at the start of the UK’s lockdown in March, raising money for the National Health Service.

Alongside the performance, Costello discussed the pandemic, as well as conducted a fan Q&A. He talked about the various ways in which people can help, and urged people to follow the appropriate advice, saying: “You can look on social media to find out how you might contribute. Pretty much anything you do that adds to the solution rather than adds to the problem is the right thing to do, as you know. You don’t need me to tell you that.”