My patience with Elton John is essentially at an end and I can tell you when it ended, March 16th, 2011 with the most egotistical and boring show known to man reaching the nadir with a 12 minute “Rocket Man”. Here is my review.
I’ve never considered John a great artist, but, like Billy Joel, I’ve considered him a great pop song writer, a much harder and greater gift. As albums artists go, he did three masterpieces from 1972 to 1973 but otherwise hasn’t sustained a concept for 40 minutes. And as a singles artist he was a 70s phenom but a great one.
So the thought of his upcoming The Diving Board, produced by T-Bone Burnett, who be made to go around with a Government Label on his reading “Liable To Induce Drowsiness” in the listener and the first song, a dreary wreck called “Home Again” was a terrifying shot across the bow.
But since then I’ve heard two new songs at the ITunes Festival gig, “Oscar Wilde Gets Out” -a touch overwrought but the piano playing is a pounding thang, and the second single, “Mexican Festival” which is actually lively! Those of us who have problems with John when he is over emoting, meaning most of the time, won’t feel much better after hearing this, but the title track is a smart waltz and, streaming the album here , while I am not willing to admit it in as a new John masterpiece, the way Robert Hilburn does here, it is better than anything since a track or two on Peachtree Road.
The problem here is what I call the Jann Wenner syndrome. Stone raves about everything old rockers do so that if they actually manage to make a good album, Jann’s jabbering worker bees have nothing believable to say about it. I mean, if The Union is a masterpiece what is Board? The greatest album ever made?
Not nearly but it isn’t an unmitigated disaster, I count a handful of good songs, “A Town Called Jubilee” added to the other two I already mention. Hilburn claims ” Time after time, the songs look gracefully at a similarly broad range of themes—youth to life’s lessons—but from the perspective of age. The closest parallel in recent years is the way Bob Dylan re-examined some of his early observations in such songs as Not Dark Yet and Things Have Changed more than a dozen years ago—the start of what has been a spectacular new resurgence in his own career.” That’s a ridiculous statement, Bernie isn’t good enough a lyricist and John isn’t a jukebox anymore. There are two types of John fans, those who love Greatest Hits One and Two and those who love Madman Across The Water. Writing great pop is a greater achievement than writing great art. Elton does neither any more but at least it isn’t crap.
The album is released September 24th, 2013.
Grade: B-