ELVIS COSTELLO”Kojak Variety” Warner Bros.* * *The...

ELVIS COSTELLO

“Kojak Variety”

Warner Bros.

* * *

The last thing you’d expect from a longtime trendsetter like Costello is bandwagon-jumping. Relax. Although a spate of artists--Duran Duran, Annie Lennox and Gloria Estefan among them--has recently released albums interpreting favorite songs by other acts, this latest entry was actually recorded five years ago.

“Kojak Variety” differs from the others because the songs are largely obscure and at least a quarter-century old. “Kojak” is thus less distracting than some of the other “favorites” albums because comparisons to the originals don’t keep creeping to mind. At the same time, however, “Kojak” comes off as somewhat disjointed. The range of styles is vast, from Little Richard’s screaming honker “Bama Lama Bama Loo” to Jesse Winchester’s boogie-ish “Payday,” and there’s no sense of familiarity to tie the songs together.

Still, “Kojak” is so lovingly crafted and cunningly executed that the only real disappointment is the absence of a butchered “Rio” or “Girls on Film” to pay back Duran Duran for the group’s recent assassination of “Watching the Detectives.”

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).