Elvis Costello & The Imposters, Look Now (Concord) ****

TEN years ago, the game was up. “I’m not of a mind to record anymore,” Costello told Mojo.

He relented in 2010 for National Ransom, a sprawling affair, but a good listen. Since then, he has kept quiet, apart from Wise Up Ghost, a puzzling collaboration with The Roots. Now he goes back on his word, breaking his silence with this lush and lovely collection.

How much you like it may depend on your tolerance of lush and lovely; the Observer thought it “pretty but patchy”. True, the album is infused by the mood of two songs written with Burt Bacharach (Don’t Look Now and Photographs Can Lie), all strings and surging backing vocals. Bacharach also contributed to the closing track, He’s Given Me Things, more of the soothing same. Another collaboration, the winning Burnt Sugar Is So Bitter, sees Costello writing with Carole King.

Costello still swaggers but it’s a sophisticated swagger now. And he rolls plenty of his own song: sung short stories, carefully and luxuriantly wrapped to take account of the occasional barb. Witness opener Under Lime, a great song that strides in with confident gait and delivers an orchestral punch, and Unwanted Number, an unhappy love song with a Motown-style chorus.

Stripping Paper is the stand-out Costello song here, an affecting and clever piano ballad in which peeling away old wallpaper revives memories of happier times when that paper went up. I Let The Sun Go Down is another delight, as too is Dishonour The Stars. And that’s to forget the surging Suspect My Tears.

After a brush last year with a small but aggressive cancer, Costello returns full of purpose, and a sense of wholeness that banishes the uncertainties of National Ransom. He’s in great voice, too – singing better than ever. Pretty, yes; patchy, no.

This is his first album with The Imposters since 2008’s Momofuku – those interlopers being the Attractions minus reportedly quarrelsome bass player Bruce Thomas, replaced by Davey Faragher.

Spencer Taylor