WIRRAL music legend Elvis Costello has confirmed details of his new album with The Imposters, The Boy Named If, which will be released on January 14 next year.

Costello, 67, whose real name is Declan McManus, moved to Birkenhead as a teenager to live with his mother before becoming a huge star during the punk and new wave era with songs such as Alison and Oliver’s Army.

According to Costello, the new album will “take us from the last days of a bewildered boyhood to that mortifying moment when you are told to stop acting like a child—which for most men (and perhaps a few gals too) can be any time in the next 50 years.”

Since being forced to cut short a UK tour after a triumphant Hammersmith Apollo appearance in March 2020, Costello has released the album, Hey Clockface and the subsequent French language EP, La Face de Pendule à Coucou - featuring the voices of Iggy Pop and Isabelle Adjani.

He also released the lavish vinyl boxset edition of the 1979 album, Armed Forces containing facsimiles of his original lyrical notebooks bound as pulp novels and comic books.

Speaking of the lyrical content of the record, Costello said: “Once upon a time, when I didn’t know what a kiss could do and didn’t even dare to caress, the way ahead was a mystery; a departing from that magic state called innocence for the pain that leads to pleasure and all that jazz.

“Don’t get me started about the guilt and shame and all those other useless possessions that you must throw overboard before you set sail with your dreamboat (and a runcible spoon).

“Whatever you take out of these tales, I wrote them for you and to make the life of these songs a little less lonely, if you should care to dive in a little deeper.”

“I started ‘The Boy Named If’ with just an electric guitar, some sharps and flats, high heels and lowdowns, with five songs in bright major keys and carried on to write a whole new record for The Imposters to play.”

The new album is released on EMI Records and will be available on vinyl, compact disc and cassette formats as well as an 88-page hardback storybook edition - each one numbered and signed by the artist.