Elvis Costello unveils new album

Elvis Costello has announced that his new album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane will be released on June 2.

The LP contains four songs from The Secret Songs, an opera about the life of Hans Christian Anderson that Costello was commissioned to write by the Royal Danish Opera, Billboard reports.

"I had the idea to work with my friend T-Bone Burnett and to make an acoustic record," he said of his upcoming release. "It's mainly, I guess you would say, bluegrass instrumentation, but they're playing my songs. They're not playing traditional bluegrass songs, and they don't sound like bluegrass songs."

Costello added: "They're ballad form. Some of them are ragtime...It's always good to try and find new ways to play songs and to find new sounds to express songs you've already written."

He also revealed that the record was recorded in a three-day session in Nashville along with Burnett and several other musicians.

"We sat around in a semi-circle where we could see each other readily. I was able to direct things and people took the initiative...and they played just beautifully," he remembered.