EC IS HERE: Elvis Costello’s next album...

EC IS HERE: Elvis Costello’s next album is coming with strings attached. The eclectic English singer-songwriter has teamed up with the London-based Brodsky Quartet to record 20 classical-leaning love songs for “The Juliet Letters,” due to hit record stores on Jan. 29. Warner Bros. Records’ marketing department has appropriately highbrow promotional plans, including ads slated to run in the non-rock ‘n’ roll likes of Harper’s and the New Yorker.

Collaborations are nothing new to the singer, who has played with such notables as Paul McCartney, but it’s the first time he has relied on musicians completely outside the pop music world. Last summer, he and the quartet twice previewed the new material--which includes “Dear Sweet Filthy World” and “I Almost Had a Weakness”--in small English theaters. A U.S. tour is planned to begin in March.