Author: Jernej Vene
Artist: John, Elton
Label: Capitol Records
Released: 2013
Length: 57:33
Rating: 3/5
The Diving Board is Elton John’s first album since 2006, if you don’t count The Union with Leon Russell from three years ago, since that one’s a duets record. The album’s producer, T-Bone Burnett, talked Elton into approaching the new record the way he did at the start of his career, meaning just basic instrumental backing. Burnett is a respected American songwriter and guitarist, the producer behind plenty of high-profile records and a former member of Bob Dylan’s backing band. Elton John wrote the music for six songs in just two days. The Diving Board is a very personal record, with the words coming from the pen of Bernie Taupin, his collaborator since 1967 and the author of the vast majority of his lyrics to date. In recent years Elton John has picked up lots of new listeners here in Slovenia, young people included, thanks to Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser of the duo 2 Cellos, who also guest on The Diving Board. The basic backing is drums, bass and piano. In fact, back at the start of his career in the 1970s, Elton toured a lot with that kind of lineup but recorded very little. The music and lyrics capture the headspace of mature men in their sixties: Oscar Wilde Gets Out tackles infidelity, that eternal theme, while in The Ballad Of Blind Tom the two also take on a blind nineteenth-century piano virtuoso. They muse on loneliness in Can’t Stay Alone Tonight, and on hanging in there through tough times in Take This Dirty Water.
At this stage of his life, Elton John has no time for philosophizing. He’s more into honesty, the thing that’s so often missing in a phony world and hits us the moment we step out of our own four walls. Sometimes, though, it happens inside them too. Elton John and Bernie Taupin are among the best-known and most successful songwriting duos in pop music. Alongside Lennon/ McCartney and Jagger/ Richards, they’re one of the few who, over more than forty years of working together, managed to string together so many hits at the top of the charts all over the world. Bernie Taupin once answered an ad in New Musical Express, where the label Liberty was looking for a lyricist. That’s how he met Reginald Kenneth Dwight, better known to us as Elton John. At first the partnership wasn’t a success, at least not financially, but the song Your Song became their calling card. Even though he dropped out of high school, Taupin has always loved reading books. Apparently he still gets through at least forty a year. As we were taught in school, reading is hugely important for building your vocabulary. Taupin grew up with a love of history, art and above all music, and so he built a distinctive lyrical style that’s tailor-made for John’s music. He worked on all of Elton’s records except A Single Man and Victim Of Love from the end of the seventies. Naturally, both turned out to be pretty big disappointments. Well, Elton came to his senses, and Taupin always writes him lyrics straight from life, often drawing on Elton’s own life or his.
When a musician has been in the public eye as long as he has, it’s very hard to offer radically different music or let yourself be led off into the world of musical experimentation. That’s exactly why the greatest strength of The Diving Board is that, following producer Burnett’s instructions, Elton John stripped the supporting musicians right back, with only bassist Raphael Saadiq, drummer Jay Bellerose and guitarist Doyle Bramhall II helping him out at the core. Strings and choirs added the finishing touches to the songs, but the sound is still very minimalist. T – Bone Burnette is a champion of the old school of recording, so The Diving Board sounds very organic, warm and homey. Elton John steers back and forth between ballads and bluesy, gospel-flavored mid-tempo tracks. The chord structures and how they develop sometimes recall one of his older hits, but John keeps steering them toward endings with a face all their own.
Line-up
Elton John – piano, vocals
Doyle Bramhall II –guitar
Keefus Ciancia – keyboards
Raphael Saadiq – bass guitar
Jay Bellerose – drums
Jack Ashford – percussion
Production
T – Bone Burnett
Track list
1. Oceans Away (3:58)
2. Oscar Wilde Gets Out (4:35)
3. A Town Called Jubilee (4:29)
4. The Ballad of Blind Tom (4:12)
5. Dream No. 1 (Instrumental interlude) (0:39)
6. My Quicksand (4:46)
7. Can’t Stay Alone Tonight (4:48)
8. Voyeur (4:16)
9. Home Again (5:01)
10. Take This Dirty Water (4:24)
11. Dream No. 2 (Instrumental interlude) (0:43)
12. The New Fever Waltz (4:38)
13. Mexican Vacation (Kids in the Candlelight) (3:33)
14. Dream No. 3 (Instrumental interlude) (1:36)
15. The Diving Board (5:55)
