The artist: Elvis Costello

The album: Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (Hear Music)

The spin: Working again with producer T-Bone Burnett and a team of top bluegrass musicians, Costello has crafted a low-key acoustic disc that should be country, but isn’t classifiable at all. It’s a merging of Burnett’s rootsy sensibility with Costello’s pop-rock operatics.

The album was recorded in three days in Nashville, and is a grab bag of Costello’s wide-ranging interests: songs from an opera about Hans Christian Andersen, a breakup ballad co-written with Loretta Lynn, a swaggering Dixieland collaboration with Burnett, a gently rockin’ remake of “Complicated Shadows”, even an old Bing Crosby tune. The playing is warm and understated, with marvelous harmonies from Jim Lauderdale and Emmylou Harris.

Again, you could call it country. But all the songs boast Costello’s recognizable architecture — the dense, bruised-romantic wordplay, the rushing, rising choruses, the emotional delivery. It’s an album that seems slight at first, but repeated listens plunge you deeper and deeper into its musically complex shadows. (The album comes out Tuesday.)

Download it now: “Sulphur To Sugarcane”, “Complicated Shadows”, “My All Time Doll”, :The Crooked Line”

The grade: A-

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